


We could've been better

by irisdouglasiana, kingwellsjaha



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: A Hell Lot of Monologues, A Major Mustache-Related Crisis, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bittersweet Ending, Everybody Lives, F/M, Let Margrethe Say Fuck, Morosexuality, Toxic Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-01-15 23:08:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 36,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21261140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisdouglasiana/pseuds/irisdouglasiana, https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingwellsjaha/pseuds/kingwellsjaha
Summary: [Freydis]: Hey Thora :) Are you free this friday evening? I’m in the mood for a ladies’ night, if you are up for it ;)When Thora agreed to join Freydis for ladies’ night, she didn’t realize exactly what she was getting herself into.





	1. Gin & Tonic

The six pack of beer had seemed like an appropriate choice for ladies’ night at the time, but as Thora double-checked the address and stared up at Freydis’s fancy apartment building, she began to suspect that perhaps she should have splurged and gone for a nice bottle of wine instead. Her suspicion deepened when Ivar’s girlfriend came out to greet her in a cute and obviously expensive designer dress and wedge heels, looking rather overdressed for someone hanging out in her own home. 

“Oh, that was sweet of you, but you didn’t have to bring anything!” Freydis exclaimed, beaming at Thora as she sheepishly handed over the six pack. “Didn’t you know? I bartend on the weekends; I was going to make drinks for all of us. I already bought everything we need.”

Thora did not, in fact, know that. “...all of us?” she repeated. She had only met Freydis a handful of times, and so it had come as a surprise to get invited over at all. She supposed she shouldn’t have assumed it would just be the two of them.

“Margrethe has been here for a little while already,” Freydis explained as she led Thora down the wide hallway to the elevator. 

“Wait, you invited Ubbe’s wife?” Thora had never met Margrethe, though Hvitserk had once mentioned to her that his older brother’s marriage was in some sort of trouble; per usual, he had been a bit fuzzy on the details. And then there had been...other stories...

“You’re surprised?” Freydis laughed and pushed the button on the elevator. “So was Ivar. He said—you know how he can get a little paranoid—he said, ‘You’re just inviting her over so you can talk about me, aren’t you? You can’t believe anything that girl says.’ And I said, ‘Why; what do you think she’s going to tell me about you?’ And then he just turned red and didn’t say anything.”

“He liked Margrethe, but she didn’t like him,” Thora blurted out. “Hvitserk told me.”

She raised an eyebrow. “I thought so. He complains about her a lot.”

Thora could certainly imagine that, though she decided maybe it was better not to say it out loud. Still, she had a feeling that Freydis could read her thoughts somehow, because she gave her a wide smile as they stepped out onto her floor. “I don’t really know Margrethe either; I hope you don’t mind,” Freydis reassured her as she opened the door to her apartment. “But I thought it would be good to invite her too. Besides, she might have interesting things to tell us.” 

Thora already knew it would be a nice apartment from the outside, but when she stepped inside behind Freydis, she had to bite back a small gasp. The place Hvitserk and Ivar shared was enormous for two people and obviously expensive, but Freydis’s place was light and airy: high, sweeping ceilings, dark hardwood floors, large windows, and a full view of the harbor. The furniture was mostly vintage, and the rest of the decor was minimal yet tasteful, with every detail carefully thought out. It was all very lovely; certainly twice as large as Thora’s flat, if not more, and obviously far beyond anything she could hope to afford. 

“Bartending pays for all this?” she asked cautiously as she followed Freydis down the hallway towards the kitchen. 

“What? Oh, no.” Freydis shook her head. “Ivar pays for all this.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Freydis shrugged, as though she hadn’t just informed Thora that her boyfriend was paying her rent. “It’s not like I asked him. He saw where I was living before and he thought I should be somewhere better. You don’t approve?”

“It’s a very nice apartment,” she stuttered.

“You know that’s not what I meant,” Freydis said, but not unkindly. “Doesn’t Hvitserk give you gifts?”

He shared his weed with her. Sometimes. “Not like…not like this,” Thora said. She suddenly felt the need to defend herself. “We’re just dating, that’s all. I don’t want to feel like I owe him anything.”

“Of course not.” Freydis’s voice was soothing as always, and Thora knew it was unfair to think badly of a person who had never been mean to her, but she couldn’t help but suspect that Freydis was thinking, _ why are you dating Hvitserk for free? _ “What would you like to drink?” she asked as they headed into the kitchen. “Margarita, cosmo, gin and tonic? Something else?”

“Um. Gin and tonic?” She leaned on the counter and watched in fascination as Freydis set aside the six pack Thora had given her and pulled out the ingredients. She obviously knew what she was doing. “How long have you been bartending for?” she asked curiously.

“A couple of years,” Freydis answered as she added the lime wedge for the garnish. “It’s been a good way to make money. I’ve been cleaning apartments for longer, though; my mom used to take me with her when I was little.”

Thora looked at Freydis, dressed up and wearing full makeup, and tried to imagine her vacuuming and mopping floors. She had a hard time seeing it. In truth, she had felt a little intimidated by Freydis the first time she had met her, hanging off of Ivar’s arm like a perfectly made up little doll with not even one hair out of place, always seeming to know exactly the right thing to say. Hvitserk had told her Freydis was a snob (“I mean, she’s dating _ Ivar _, so…”), and she certainly didn’t seem like the type of person Thora thought she could be friends with. Now she was beginning to wonder if she had perhaps misjudged her.

Freydis handed her the gin and tonic and then led her into the living room, where Margrethe was waiting for them on the couch with a half-finished margarita in her hand. She turned out to be as pretty in person as she was in the few pictures Hvitserk had shown her, with neatly styled blond hair and a cute manicure that matched her flowery dress. Next to the two of them, Thora felt shabby in her denim jacket and jeans.

Margrethe gave her a brief smile as Freydis introduced them, but she clearly had things on her mind, and she soon picked up on whatever conversation she had been having with Freydis before Thora arrived, which seemed to be all about Ubbe. Hvitserk had sometimes talked to Thora about his relationship with his older brother, which had been a close one until a year or so ago. Then something had happened between Ubbe and Ivar—something business-related, Hvitserk told her rather vaguely—and when it came down to it, he had ended up siding with Ivar, though he still occasionally was in touch with Ubbe. Thora hadn’t pressed him for more information, but she had of course been curious about the family dynamics. The only member of his family she had met so far had been Ivar, and that was only because he and Hvitserk lived together and so encountering him had been unavoidable. If nothing else, ladies’ night was a good chance to get some answers about these things.

Theoretically, at least, because Margrethe was currently delving deep into her relationship woes with Ubbe in greater detail than Thora really wanted or needed to know. “I just feel like things have been _ different _ between us over the past year,” Margrethe was telling Freydis. “But whenever I say anything, Ubbe tells me I’m being too negative, and I guess that’s true. I know I need to have a more positive attitude.” 

Thora’s heart sank a little when Freydis gave Margrethe an encouraging nod. Margrethe was clearly more than a little tipsy at this point, and her words began tumbling out faster and faster: “He’s just—I know he’s been under a lot of pressure, now that he’s decided he wants to take a more active role in the business again. Especially with the whole money laundering investigation—"

“The what?” Thora interrupted. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Freydis subtly straighten up, but her face showed no surprise.

Margrethe blinked. “Oh. I probably shouldn’t say anything about it. But—” she said. Then she proceeded to tell them everything, or if not everything, then certainly a lot: the family shipping enterprise as a cover for smuggling drugs through the port...the distribution of the drugs to a network of dealers...the money laundering to make the profits appear legitimate...

“Ubbe told you all of this?” Freydis asked her after she finished. Thora couldn’t even think of anything to say; she was still staring at them with her mouth wide open.

“I helped organize the spreadsheets because he needed help; it was too hard for him to keep track of the finances all on his own.” Margrethe suddenly let out a loud sniffle and started to cry. “I—I just—love him—so much,” she sobbed.

“I know,” Freydis told her soothingly. She went over to sit by Margrethe and rub her back while Thora watched awkwardly and toyed with her empty glass. She suddenly wanted to be far away from here.

“Thora,” Freydis half-whispered, still rubbing Margrethe’s back. “Can you get some tissues? They’re in the bathroom.”

She jumped up immediately, relieved to have a task to do. Her phone buzzed on the way to the bathroom and she checked her messages.

**[Hvitserk]:** come

**[Hvitserk]: **over ?

They had already talked about her spending the night at his place, though she hadn’t been planning to head over until later, and it felt a little rude to leave so abruptly. But at the moment it really seemed as though the remainder of ladies’ night would consist of another hour or so of sitting awkwardly on Freydis’s couch and watching Margrethe cry, and there wasn’t much appeal in that. At the same time, she was still absorbing the information Margrethe had given them about Hvitserk’s family; the money laundering operation, the drug business...

She wasn’t naive. The Lothbrok family name had long been associated with shadiness, and Hvitserk was always surrounded by drugs and had no problem with breaking rules. It made sense. She just had always hoped it wasn’t the case; had hoped that Hvitserk’s attitudes were connected to his wealth and not some crime empire.

But that wasn’t the case and now Thora had to reexamine her relationship to him. The conclusion was simple: dump him and move on. It wasn’t like they were anything serious yet. Better to get out early.

And yet the mere thought of it made Thora’s stomach turn. Was it bad to be in a relationship with someone connected to crime? It had not looked like it had bothered Freydis much, not when she had her whole apartment—maybe her whole life at this point—financed by Ivar. Thora only enjoyed Hvitserk’s company and sometimes his weed. She had not used any of his money, apart from a few meals that Hvitserk had paid for. Nothing huge.

She snatched up the box of tissues for Margrethe and texted him back:

**[Thora]: **I’m leaving Freydis’s place now. I’ll be there soon.

**[Hvitserk]:** k

She headed back to the living room and handed the box over to Freydis. Margrethe took a tissue and barely even looked up. “I’m sorry, but I have to go now,” Thora told them awkwardly. “Hvitserk is expecting me at his place. Thanks for the drink and for having me over.”

“Oh!” Freydis exclaimed. She jumped to her feet. “Of course; I’m glad you were able to make it. We can do this again sometime.”

“Sure,” Thora agreed, hoping she didn’t sound too reluctant. “I think I can find my way out of the building on my own,” she added hastily, and to her relief, Freydis didn’t insist. 

She just couldn’t stop thinking about it as she left Freydis’s fancy apartment building and made the short walk over to Hvitserk and Ivar’s place: Margrethe’s tears and story about the money laundering investigation; Freydis’ innocent smile through it all. She probably had known it already. Thora had been the only one left in the dark. _ Typical_.

She tried to put those thoughts out of her head as she took the elevator to their floor and headed to their apartment. Nobody answered when she knocked, though she could hear somebody moving around inside. After a moment, she knocked again. “Hvitserk?” she called out, but again there was no response. Maybe it was Ivar she was hearing, and he was ignoring her out of spite.

She was about to take her phone out and call Hvitserk when the door abruptly swung open and Hvitserk stepped out into the hall. He pulled the door shut behind him, but not before Thora caught a glimpse of a strange, wild looking man with a long beard rummaging through the living room. “Hey,” Hvitserk said, looking more than a little frazzled. He ran his hands through his hair. “Change of plans. Can I stay at your place instead?”

“But you told me to come over here?”

“Yeah, I know.” He let out a long sigh. “My dad is here. Can we please go now?”

“Um. Okay.” She shifted the bag on her shoulder. “I assume you’ll tell me what this is about later?”

“Yeah, I will. Let me get my stuff. Just wait here for a minute.” He tilted his head back and shut his eyes for a moment before heading back into the apartment and closing the door behind him. She checked her phone for messages and listened to the muffled sound of Hvitserk talking to his father, but she didn’t have to wait long before he reemerged with his own bag and the same harried expression on his face. “Let’s go.”

He was quiet on the train ride back to Thora’s apartment, but she could see some of the tension slipping away from him the further they traveled. She squeezed his hand and was rewarded by a small smile. “Thanks,” he told her in a low voice as they got off the train and headed out to the street.

“My place is better than yours anyway,” she teased, even though they both knew that wasn’t true.

His mind was still elsewhere. “Yeah,” he finally answered.

They didn’t speak again until they were back to her apartment. He dropped his bag on the floor and gratefully accepted the beer she offered him. They sat down on her bed, which in her small apartment doubled as the couch. “Sorry,” he blurted. “I just…my dad, he usually stays at the summer house in Spain, but Ivar gave him the spare key to the apartment, and sometimes he’ll show up randomly and crash on the couch for a while. And when he does, I just have to get out of there.”

“You said he left when you were a kid,” she remembered.

“Yeah.” He took a long sip of beer. “I was ten. I haven’t really talked to him much since then. He never called or, or sent birthday cards, or anything, you know? So I figured he just didn’t want us in his life anymore. But now because Ivar gave him the fucking key without asking me, he gets to pop up whenever he wants to. Dad never asked if I wanted him in _ my _ life.”

“I’m sorry,” Thora said. It sounded horribly inadequate.

“Can’t do anything about it.” He shrugged. “The first time this happened, he ended up staying for a whole month. Barely said a word to me. After the first week or so, I asked him how long he was going to be there, and he looked at me and said, ‘Which one are you?’”

“He—what?” She was suddenly furious on his behalf.

“Oh, he knew,” Hvitserk continued. “He just wanted to get me mad. He started laughing, and Ivar thought it was really fucking funny too. I’d never hit my father, and of course I’d never hit Ivar either, but I wanted to.” He finished off his beer and held up the bottle in contemplation. “But that’s just how they are, you know? You can’t choose your family, I guess.” He set the bottle down and grabbed her hand, intertwining his with hers. Thora really wished that it didn’t make her heart flutter as much as it did.

“How was your…thing? With Freydis, was she nice to you?”

Thora blinked. She had not expected Hvitserk to ask her about it. For a moment she considered telling him about what Margrethe had told them, just to see his face. Maybe he would brush her worries away; maybe he wasn’t involved in these things at all. Just a rich kid from a big fucked up family, she could imagine that. But the other possibilities scared her more and she was afraid he would let go of her hand, which he was now squeezing softly.

“Yeah, it was okay,” she lied, and squeezed his hand in return.

Hvitserk smiled. His eyes had fallen on their hands. He raised her hand and kissed the back of it. “That’s good to hear, she can be a little stuck up sometimes,” he mumbled before planting another kiss on her wrist. Thora knew all too well where this was leading.

Before long, he had pushed her down onto the bed and was busy kissing her collarbone. His moustache tickled against her skin and she couldn’t help giggling. It turned into loud laughter when he didn’t stop. When it became unbearable, she put her hand against his head to stop him. He looked at her with a little confusion before noticing her smile, and then he grinned too.

They looked at each other for a moment, just smiling at each other. She was certain she would get used to the feeling of his moustache someday, but not today. Hvitserk scooted up to examine her face.

“I was thinking,” she began as her hands moved over his shoulders. “What do you want to do tomorrow?” Hvitserk didn’t answer, and instead leaned down to press a kiss onto her cheek. 

Thora tried to remain focused. “I don’t have to work for my dad, so we could actually go somewhere,” she continued, while he leaned over and kissed her other cheek. “I wanted to bake something and maybe do my math assignments.” Hvitserk leaned down and their noses brushed against each other and Thora knew it was futile. She stared into his eyes and watched as his attention shifted to her lips. She had to admit she liked these moments the most. Hvitserk was sometimes hard to read, but in this moment she felt safe and reassured. At least on one line of communication they understood each other. Thora raised her head in the same moment Hvitserk leaned down. They met somewhere in the middle.

The world grew quiet. Her thoughts were tossed aside and replaced by the feeling of Hvitserk’s hands underneath her shirt. They lost clothes rather quickly after that: first his shirt, then her pants. Hvitserk planted kisses onto her thighs, kissing his way up. Her hands moved towards his hair, first to stroke it, then to hold onto him.

It never felt like they spend a lot of time like this, and yet when Thora looked at the clock it was already three in the morning. She furrowed her brows, slightly puzzled by how quickly the night had gone by.

Hvitserk had gotten up to get rid of the condom. He stood in the middle of the room completely naked. No curtains were drawn, but he didn’t seem to mind. Most people were asleep anyway. 

Thora’s eyes moved slowly down his body, which was covered with small tattoos. She stopped at his ass.

“Why do you have the word ‘ass’ tattooed onto your butt?” The first time she had noticed, she had broken down laughing for about ten minutes, though she had never asked him about it until now.

Hvitserk looked down over his shoulder, though Thora wasn’t sure if he was actually capable of seeing it from that position. “Oh, that one,” he said, as if he had another ‘ass’ tattoo on a different part of his body. “A friend gave it to me during a party.”

What else had she expected as an answer? She grinned. “I was asking why, not who.”

Hvitserk tossed the condom into her trash. “I don’t know, I would have to ask him, I guess.”

Sometimes, Thora understood why her friends were more than a little suspicious of Hvitserk. Stories like this would ring a thousand alarm bells with them. _ How can you date someone like this? _ they would ask, but somehow Thora couldn’t help but find it cute.

“Was your friend English?”

Hvitserk furrowed his brows and crawled back into her bed. She tossed aside the blanket and huddled closer as he put his hands on her waist.

“No, he’s from Copenhagen too. Why do you ask?”

She grinned and pressed a kiss against his shoulder. “Because it’s in English.”

Hvitserk started to grin as well. “Oh. I think he just wanted to make it international, you know?”

They laughed. He pulled her closer and kissed her again. It was probably only Thora’s imagination, but when they parted and looked at each other, his expression was soft and warm. It made her feel fuzzy inside. She pressed her forehead against his and closed her eyes and for a moment there was nothing but her quick heartbeat and his warm skin pressed against hers, and those things were louder than her doubts. They had only been dating for three months, at any rate. She would figure out what to make of this all later.

* * *

“I want you to meet my father.”

Freydis looked up from her cappuccino, cooling on the table. “Your father?” she asked Ivar with a raised eyebrow. “I thought he lived in Spain.”

“Yeah, normally he does, but he’s staying at my place right now.” Ivar grabbed her hand and kissed it. “He’ll like you. I know he will.”

Ivar also believed that his mother liked her, which was certainly untrue, but it wasn’t really the time to bring that up. She had politely suffered through her third brunch with Aslaug and Ivar just a couple weeks ago. At this point, she felt reasonably certain that Aslaug’s icy demeanor was not personal; it was just the fact that she was dating her son that seemed to bother her, and Ivar after all was—as he was always happy to point out—her favorite. And Freydis could handle that, so she didn’t see any reason why she wouldn’t be able to handle his father as well. She squeezed his hand back and smiled. “All right,” she agreed. “When?”

A big grin spread across his face. “Let’s do it today. I’ll find you something nice to go with your Valentino scarf. Maybe some earrings,” he said speculatively. Then he reached for his crutch, even though she hadn’t even finished half of her drink. “Come on, let’s go.”

As usual, she let herself get carried away by his enthusiasm and she abandoned her cappuccino in the coffee shop. This had been their third stop of the day, after hunting first for a new blazer for him and then a pair of boots for her. She had been the one to suggest that they take a break for coffee in a covert effort to slow him down a little bit when she sensed he was wearing out from all the walking they had done. At the moment, however, having had a chance to rest and excited by the thought of introducing her to his father, he seemed full of energy, talking nonstop as he took her by the elbow and steered her in the direction of a jewelry store that he claimed his mother was fond of. He had told her how Aslaug had frequently taken him on her shopping trips when he was a child, and it clearly had left an impact on him. He was comfortable and at ease in all these expensive stores, chatting away with the salespeople about the newest acquisitions and upcoming trends before picking out something for her to try on, or letting her choose something for him. 

Although he had talked about buying her earrings, once inside the store he became distracted by the selection of rings instead. “That would look good on you,” he told her, pointing to one with a princess-cut diamond that bore a suspicious resemblance to an engagement ring.

“Earrings, Ivar,” she reminded him gently, urging him onwards.

After a lengthy and somewhat heated discussion, she finally settled on a pair of fan-shaped gold earrings set with green gemstones and diamonds, and Ivar handed over his credit card without flinching when the saleswoman told him the price. He insisted she wear them out of the store, and she was more than happy to do so. She couldn’t help but feel a surge of affection for him, watching him practically bouncing off the walls with anticipation as they made one last stop for a quick dinner before heading back to Ivar’s apartment.

He turned to look at her before they went inside, and carefully tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear. “You look perfect,” he told her, before bending down to kiss her. She couldn’t stop herself from blushing.

The moment he opened the door, she was hit by the smell of weed. This wasn’t terribly unusual; the apartment Ivar shared with his older brother usually smelled like weed to some extent, though generally not this overpowering. It was soon obvious as to why: Ivar’s father, who she had only seen before in pictures, was sitting on the living room couch and alternating between smoking one joint and rolling a second, and he barely glanced up when they entered the room. He had a long, scraggly beard, his clothes were worn out and stained, and he did not smell very good at all.

“Dad,” Ivar said proudly, nudging her forward. “This is my girlfriend, Freydis.”

Ivar’s father looked her up and down slowly with his bloodshot eyes. “Oh, so you have a girlfriend now,” he said at last, and there was something in his tone that made her slightly uneasy.

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you,” Freydis said with a polite smile, extending her hand. Ragnar sat there for a moment, unmoving, and then he reached out and shook it. He held onto her hand for a couple seconds longer than necessary before letting go. “Ivar has told me so much about you,” she stumbled on, thrown off by the odd little smile hovering on his lips.

“Oh?” Ragnar raised his eyebrows. “What has my son told you?”

_ That you left your family when Ivar was seven, and you didn’t speak to him or see him again until he was almost seventeen. _ “He said you’re a brilliant businessman,” she said. “You built up your company from nothing.”

“Really.” Ragnar refocused his attention on the joint he had been rolling. “What else?”

Her mind went blank. “That—that…”

“Freydis is studying art in school,” Ivar interrupted eagerly, and she let out a silent sigh of relief. “She makes paintings. We went to the National Gallery together and she knew about all the artists.”

She had to keep herself from laughing. The trip to the art museum had been their third date and one of the few that had been her idea. He had spent most of the time acting impatient or bored, so much so that she hadn’t been sure there would even _ be _ a fourth date; apparently, he had gotten something out of it anyway. “I wouldn’t say I knew about _ all _ of them,” she teased him.

“Hm.” Having finished his first joint, Ragnar lit the second. He inhaled deeply and then exhaled the smoke in their direction. “Well. I sure hope my son is capable of taking care of you as a man should.”

The flicker of embarrassment and dismay on Ivar’s face was unmistakable. She quickly grabbed his hand and gave him a slight tug to get him moving. “Oh, he always takes care of me; don’t worry about that,” she said cheerfully. “It was so nice to meet you, and I hope you have a wonderful evening.”

Ragnar said nothing, but Freydis could still feel his eyes on her back as they left him and headed into Ivar’s room. The moment the door was closed, Ivar pushed her up against the wall and kissed her hard. 

“Hey,” she said in a low voice after she was finally able to pull back from him and catch her breath. “Do you want to do this somewhere else? Your dad is right there.”

“He doesn’t care; come on,” he mumbled, but then he stepped away. His face was a little red and his breathing was shallow.

“We can go to my place for the night,” she suggested. “Please?”

For a moment, she wondered if he would refuse. “Yeah, okay,” he said, and maybe she just imagined it, but she thought she heard a note of relief in his voice. “Let me get my stuff together.”

Freydis took a seat on his bed and watched as he wandered around the room and gathered up his things. She had seen the apartments of plenty of wealthy people before because of her cleaning job, yet it still felt a little strange to be in one as a guest. Ivar’s walk-in closet alone was bigger than the bedroom she’d had at her mom’s apartment before she moved out, and she had never seen a bathroom quite as fancy as his. It all made sense, of course; the room had to be accessible and large enough for him to get around in a wheelchair if he needed to, but sometimes she couldn’t help but be a little overwhelmed by it all, even after six months of dating. And now she had her own place too, because of him. The first time he had brought up the idea, he had been so casual about it, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world that she should have an apartment of her own. No question of how she could possibly afford something like that; no worrying about whether she could pay the security deposit or if her credit was good enough. He had just...taken care of it. She wondered if he knew how much that meant to her. 

“Ready?” he asked, disrupting her thoughts. He held out his hand and she smiled and took it.

Ragnar was still sitting on the sofa in the living room and smoking his joint when they came out of the bedroom. “Leaving so soon? That was fast.”

Once again, Freydis saw the same expression of uncertainty on Ivar’s face. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” he told his father.

“Have a wonderful evening,” Ragnar said, mimicking Freydis’s inflection. He was still laughing as they walked out of the apartment together and shut the door behind them. 

They didn’t speak much on the way to her place, but it was easy to sense where Ivar’s mood was headed, and it wasn’t for the better. As soon as they entered her apartment, he was on her again, pressing her against the wall and kissing her almost desperately. She stroked his back in an attempt to relax him, but her nails involuntarily dug into his skin when he bit her lower lip a little too hard.

Sometimes she was able to soothe him a bit; slow him down and get him to be a little more gentle. She liked those moments the most, but they never lasted for long and tonight it seemed futile to even try. So this time she didn’t even bother to tell him how to touch her or ask him to go down on her as he sometimes was willing to do. She understood that this was not about her. It wasn't even really about his own pleasure. This was all about Ragnar and what he had said to him.

All his actions this evening felt like a silent commentary—pushing her onto her bed, pulling at her clothes so impatiently that she thought he might actually tear the flimsy material, sliding himself on top of her: _ look, Father, see how she is beneath me; look, Father, see how well I can take care of my woman! _ She stared up at him and watched him bite his lip like he was in pain. She reached out her hand to touch his face, but he shrugged her off and kept going even though his arms were trembling and his eyes were watering. He suddenly stopped mid-stroke and practically collapsed on top of her, and for a moment Freydis feared he really had hurt himself this time. When he opened his eyes again, the shame radiating from his face was almost too much to bear, and she looked away.

He rolled over on his side so he was facing away from her, clearly not wanting to talk about it. After a few minutes had passed, she reached out and lightly traced the dark lines of the tattoo on his back. It was a large tattoo and still unfinished, but what was there was beautifully done: the outline of raven wings, each feather distinct and yet blending together seamlessly. He had started it just over a year ago, he had told her, after he finally moved out from his mother’s house. She had asked why he’d decided to get it.

_ Because it was some part of myself that could feel like it belonged to me and nobody else, _ he said. _ I know it’s just a tattoo, but getting it felt like freedom. _

“When will you get this finished?” she said out loud.

He turned his head, looking warily over his shoulder at her. Then he flopped over onto his stomach. “I’m going back for another appointment next month,” he said. “There’s still a lot of shading left to do; probably at least a couple more sessions.”

“Won’t that hurt a lot?”

He seemed slightly puzzled by the question. “Well, yeah. But it’s fine.”

She rolled over on her stomach so she could wrap an arm around his waist. “I have something to tell you,” she told him, excitement creeping into her voice. “I didn’t want to say anything until it actually happened, but I had a job interview this morning, and I think it went really well.”

He frowned in confusion. “You had an interview? What for?”

“It’s at a gallery that specializes in postmodernist art, so it’s really perfect for me,” she said. “It’s not one of the big galleries, but they’re up-and-coming. It’s exactly the kind of job I’ve been hoping to get so I can really start my career. And it’s full time, which is even better. I can keep taking classes part-time until I finish my degree.” Just thinking about that place made her smile.

Ivar was still frowning. He moved her arm, turned over, and sat up. “What will you do if they make you an offer?”

_ What kind of a question was that? _ “I’ll take it, of course.” 

“If it’s about the money, you know I can help you out; you don’t have to worry about that.” He pushed aside the covers, moved his legs over the side of the bed, and started fumbling around for his clothes.

She sat up and watched him as he dressed. “That’s kind of you; it really is, but I’m not just doing this for the money. I _ want _ this job.”

“Yes, but…” he began, and now he sounded less surprised and more frustrated. “But if it’s full time, I won’t be able to see you as often. And you’re my girlfriend. I’m supposed to take care of you. That’s what real men do. I don’t want you to take the job.”

She wasn’t in the mood to fight him over this. “Well, it was just an interview; I don’t know if they will offer me the job yet. We can figure all of that out later.”

“Fine,” he said, but he seemed unconvinced. He took his crutch and headed for her bathroom, still a little unsteady on his feet.

Once he was gone, Freydis got up, slipped on her robe, and walked over to the window. It was dark outside by now, and the city was aglow. From here, she had a full view of the harbor. It was her favorite thing about the apartment Ivar had picked out for her. She leaned on the windowsill and focused on the shapes of the boats bobbing calmly on the water while she gathered her thoughts. She had thought she’d mostly figured Ivar out by now, but his reaction to her news had taken her by surprise and she wasn’t sure why. _ It’s probably nothing_, she told herself. _ He’s just in a bad mood, that’s all. _

She reached up and took out the new earrings Ivar had bought her earlier that day. With only the lights from the harbor streaming through the windows, the green stones looked nearly black, and the gold shone dully. She slipped them into the pocket of her robe when she heard the bathroom door open and Ivar came out to join her. She hoped he wouldn’t bring up the interview again, and fortunately, he stayed quiet. After a moment, he put his arm around her, and she leaned against his shoulder and they watched the boats pass by together.

* * *

Today would be a good day. No, it would be a great day; Margrethe was certain of it. After all, Ubbe had complained that she had been rather negative in the last few months, and she had to agree. Everything had been tense and complicated and it had made her unbearable, but not today. Today would be better.

She had just left the hairdresser and was on her way back home to join Ubbe, and then they would drive into town and meet Björn and Torvi for a double date. It was the first proper date in almost a year and Margrethe couldn’t help but feel excited as she drove. Ubbe had chosen their usual spot, a fancy Italian restaurant, and Margrethe was already going through the menu in her head. Back when they had been dating, she and Ubbe had always shared a starter and a dessert. There was the cheese platter, the antipasto, the _ piatto di olive_...

She put a big smile on her face as she pulled into the garage and entered the house. “I’m back!” she yelled, but got no answer. She pulled off her heels. “Ubbe?”

She finally found him in his home office. From the hallway, she could hear him typing something away on the computer. She ran her fingers through her hair a final time before stepping inside, though his full attention was still on the document in front of him.

“Hey,” she said in her most sultry voice.

Ubbe furrowed his brows and leaned forward to examine something he had written on the computer. “Hey,” he said absently.

Margrethe tried her best not to look disappointed. She moved closer to his chair, put her hands on his shoulder, and kissed the top of his head. He paused and pushed the chair back, but finally looked up and frowned. “Everything all right?”

Margrethe could feel her smile freezing on her face and she tried to fight it. “Of course.” Her eyes moved over his clothes, his usual jeans and white shirt. “Are you ready for the date?”

He turned his attention back to the computer screen. “Yeah, I just need to finish this first, okay, sweetie?”

_ Sweetie_. Her stomach turned a little bit, but she nodded. “That’s fine; I need to change anyway.” She waited another moment for a reaction, but he was busy rereading a paragraph, so she headed into their bedroom on the opposite side of the hall. Her dress lay ready on the bed: a long-sleeved violet dress that showed off her cleavage. As she put it on, she tried her best to push the negative thoughts aside. Ubbe was just busy. Work was hard on him. He would be in a better mood as soon as he was finished.

Her mind went back to the evening with Thora and Freydis. She had not expected it, but it had been nice. She had felt less alone with them, even though they were younger than her. Margrethe talked to a few of the neighbors and the women in her yoga class, but they were usually more focused on their brunches and children, and it was impossible to talk to about issues concerning Ubbe and his business. Not that Hvitserk’s girlfriend had seemed to know much of anything, but Margrethe didn’t want to judge her too hard. Thora had been kind to her throughout the evening, if a little tense. She wondered if Hvitserk had told her that they had hooked up a few times before she started dating Ubbe.

Freydis, at least, was more aware, though Margrethe still found herself a little puzzled by her. Ivar’s wealth was undoubtedly good security, but back when she was working as Aslaug’s personal assistant and before she married Ubbe, he was just a creep who had pestered her whenever he was around. 

No, she was grateful for the evening. It had given her a place to vent and, to her surprise, things had slowly been improving ever since. Ubbe had suggested the double date and she had woken up feeling well-rested for the first time in a long time.

When she was done putting on the dress and her makeup, she looked at herself in the mirror. She still had bags under her eyes, which she had hidden under her foundation, and the dress sat a little too tightly around her waist, but it was fine. She was fine. Everything was fine.

Ubbe’s knock on the door made her turn. His eyes moved over her dress and she expected a comment, but he turned away quickly. “Are you ready?”

Margrethe smiled. “Of course, husband.” She wanted to take his hand, but he had already moved down the hallway, so she just followed him.

As soon as they sat down in the car, he became more talkative. “Don’t forget, the main goal today is to reconnect with Björn, after this stressful and very disappointing year...” he trailed off, gripping the steering wheel a little tighter. He was, of course, talking about Hvitserk and Ivar, who had decided to part ways with him both in business and in private matters, as these things tended to go hand in hand in the Lothbrok family. Ubbe’s push to make the Lothbrok business a fully legal enterprise had not gone over well with either of them, and Ubbe was still more than a little disappointed and angry with his brothers. Margrethe had not told him about her meeting with Freydis and Thora for that reason. It would’ve just made him mad.

“We need to stick together as a family, now more than ever,” he continued, sounding more determined. “I am certain that Björn understands this. We just need to spend a little more time together. After all, we have to preserve our father’s legacy.” 

Margrethe had only met Ragnar at the wedding. He had shown up in shorts and sandals after the ceremony was over, drank a bottle of champagne, and then left. Ubbe had tried to remain cordial, but she knew it had been difficult for him. During their honeymoon, he had explained how his father had left the family and the business when he was twelve, and afterwards, he had helped raise all his younger brothers. She had tried to comfort him, but Ubbe had shrugged his shoulders. “It’s all right; I don’t miss him. It’s still good to be Ragnar Lothbrok’s son. People respect me for it, and that is more than enough.” She wasn’t sure if she believed it—she couldn’t forgive her own father after everything he had pulled—but she found it admirable that Ubbe still cared about the business his father had started.

“Just try and lighten the mood; I will do the rest,” he concluded. She reached out her hand to squeeze his on the wheel.

“I’ll do my best,” she promised, but even under her touch he couldn’t relax. She pulled her hand away and he turned up the music as a U2 song came on, signaling the end of the conversation. 

The Italian restaurant had not changed much in a year. They were led to their table, where to her surprise Björn and Torvi were already waiting. Björn wasn’t known for his punctuality, which meant that Torvi had pushed him to be early. Margrethe’e eyes darted quickly between the two. She knew that their marriage had been falling apart for some time. Last Christmas, while very drunk, Björn had told Margrethe about all his affairs, culminating in an animated monologue about his brief yet passionate relationship with a friend and business associate, Halfdan. Afterwards, Björn had acted as if nothing had happened and she wondered if he had forgotten he told her these things, but she couldn’t keep herself from watching to see what was going on between him and Torvi.

Tonight, however, there was nothing remarkable, except that they didn’t sat close to each other. Like Margrethe, Torvi had dressed up, but Björn wore his usual tight tank top and shorts even though it was early autumn. His eyes were focused on his phone and when Ubbe greeted them, he took a moment before looking up.

Torvi immediately got up and hugged Ubbe and then Margrethe. “Your dress is beautiful,” Margrethe told her after they pulled apart.

Torvi’s smile grew wider. “Thank you. I bought it a week ago and I absolutely love it.”

They all sat down, and Margrethe was pleased to see that the menu was the same. She gently touched Ubbe’s arm. "Honeybun, would you rather have _ piatto di olive _ or the cheese plate as a starter?" 

Ubbe frowned. "I hadn't thought about it. Actually, I'm not too sure if I want a starter."

She knew she shouldn't be disappointed over something so trivial, and yet she could feel her smile disappearing on her face. Ubbe noticed it.

"You can have any starter you want," he smiled, clearly not understanding the problem.

"Yes, I know, we just—we just always shared a starter…" Her voice trailed off as Ubbe's smile froze. Her eyes moved to Torvi and Björn. Björn was too focused on his phone, but Torvi was watching them. "Yeah, I can take the _ piatto di olive_," she mumbled, and let go of his arm.

She noticed Torvi and Ubbe exchanging a glance. For a moment, Margrethe felt like Ubbe was silently apologizing for her behavior, but it also seemed as though there was something else in their exchange. Confused, she returned her focus to the menu while Ubbe tried to make conversation with Björn about their father and their childhood. It sounded a little scripted to her, but she still looked at him encouragingly, and so did Torvi, who listened carefully and gave him an encouraging nod now and then. Björn, on the other hand, was focused on his phone. 

“—so what do you say?” Ubbe ended with a big smile on his face that made Margrethe smile as well. She reached out to him without thinking, and to her surprise Ubbe grabbed her hand and stroked it gently. She quickly looked down at the table to hide her smile. Then she noticed that Björn still hadn’t said anything. She could feel Ubbe growing tense underneath her hand.

The drinks and starters came right in time. Torvi praised the wine and Björn quickly downed his beer. The topics grew more casual and social as Torvi spoke about Guthrum’s progress in school, but Margrethe could feel Ubbe’s eyes on Björn. Björn even engaged in a little bit of small talk, and his face lit up when the tuna pizza he had ordered for his entree arrived.

Then he looked down at his phone once again and swore. Ubbe turned and watched his brother with a puzzled expression, even Torvi seemed concerned. “What is it?” she asked.

With a sigh, Björn put the phone away and started on his second beer. “Barcelona is losing,” he explained, sounding terribly distressed. Torvi and Ubbe both looked very disappointed at the same time. Ubbe frowned as he turned towards his food, obviously trying to control his emotions. Margrethe put a hand on his arm in an attempt to soothe him.

“Champions League?” Margrethe asked to keep the conversation going. She had never really cared about football, but her father had. Every Saturday and Sunday he had sat in front of the television watching his favorite teams play. She and her sister had been allowed to sit in front on the ground and play, but they had to be very quiet about it. Margrethe still remembered the one time she had tried to show him something she had drawn, and he pushed it to the side, too focused on the game to really care.

Björn cut a piece of pizza and ate it with his hands. “Against Bavaria of all things,” he explained with a full mouth, bits of food falling onto the table. “It’s 2 to 1 for some godforsaken reason.” Margrethe saw Torvi make a face.

“How much time do they have to catch up?” With pride, she noticed that the tactic seemed to be working and Björn was growing more and more talkative. Now she just needed to find a way to bring the conversation back to Ubbe’s topic.

“Sweetie,” Ubbe said, and grabbed her arm. Margrethe turned to look at him, confused.

Björn didn’t notice. “They still have twenty minutes, but they have not played well throughout the game.”

“They can still do it,” she replied with a smile. 

Ubbe tugged a little harder. “Sweetie.”

“Yes, honeybun?” she asked, casually putting her hand on his. She gave him an encouraging smile and he smiled back, but it didn’t reach his eyes. In fact, now that she looked closer, he seemed displeased.

“Let me handle this,” he told her, before turning back to Björn. He didn’t notice the smile freezing on Margrethe’s lips. She didn’t even hear what Ubbe was saying. Her eyes fell onto the wine glass in front of her and she held onto it and stared into its red abyss.

She had tried to make it right, but as usual, it was never enough. He didn’t do it on purpose. It wasn’t really his fault, but whenever he called her _sweetie_, all she could think about was his mother during the wedding preparations: _Margrethe, sweetie, do you really think this dress suits your figure?_ _Sweetie, are you sure you want roses for your wedding; don’t you think that’s a little cliché?_ _Sweetie, let me handle this._ Margrethe had tried so hard to make everything perfect back then, even choosing roses because she thought Aslaug would like them, but nothing could make that woman happy, because the problem wasn’t the dress or the flowers. It was just her.

Her eyes drifted over to Torvi, who was watching her with a sad—almost guilty—expression. Quickly, she remembered where she was and she turned to Ubbe, who was now speaking directly against Ivar and Hvitserk.

“We cannot let them continue as my mother has done, Björn,” he was saying with a note of desperation. “I’ve talked with your mother about this and she agreed. It’s time that we stand together and turn this business into a fully legal enterprise. We were ready years ago, when dad tried to do it.”

It was his best and most rousing speech, but Margrethe could see that Björn wasn’t interested. Now that his team was losing, his entire focus was on the pizza in front of him, which was almost finished. When Ubbe started to talk about Lagertha, Björn rolled his eyes. Margrethe was surprised; she hadn’t known that Ubbe had been in contact with her.

The silence stretched out between them. Björn picked at his teeth with his finger before taking the last slice. He turned to Torvi. “The pizza here is so small; remember the place we usually go? With the bigger ones?”

Torvi’s lips grew even thinner. “Björn, Ubbe was talking to you.”

“I know,” Björn answered casually. He turned to Ubbe. “But I don’t think it’s the time or place to discuss something like this.”

Margrethe could feel Ubbe tensing up beside her. She reached out her hand to soothe him, but Ubbe brushed her away.

“Björn, we can’t let Ivar do this,” he said. His hands were shaking like they always were when he was very very angry, but his voice remained calm and even. He and Aslaug were the same way: always regal and cool, even when they were close to bursting.

“‘We?’” Björn wasn’t bothered. “The quarrel you have with Ivar is yours alone. Work it out with him, or don’t. I really don’t care.” He wiped his hands on his pants and took a look around. “I think I could have another pizza,” he stated. “And a beer.”

Torvi and Ubbe again exchanged glances, and then Ubbe relaxed when Torvi shrugged her shoulders. Margrethe somehow had the feeling that Ubbe had involved Torvi in his plans, and for a moment she was jealous. Ubbe had occasionally involved her in some of his work, but he had also kept her at a distance. Why would he ask Torvi for help and not her?

After they had said their goodbyes and got back in the car, she kept thinking about it and decided she was just being silly. Ubbe needed a way in with Björn, and while Torvi’s and Björn’s relationship was strained, she knew him better than anyone else in the world. Of course he had asked her for advice. It made sense.

She looked at Ubbe, who had put on music again. Nickelback was now blasting through the car. “It could’ve gone worse,” she finally dared to say.

Ubbe gave her a dirty look. “Tell me, how could it have gone worse?” he asked, and his voice was dripping with venom. 

Margrethe knew that he wasn’t upset at her, but the situation. He was tired and angry. As his wife, her job was to cancel it out and bring sunshine when it rained. She tried again. “It’s not that Björn said anything against your idea; he just didn’t want to ruin the date setting, I suppose.”

“He came in a tank top,” Ubbe countered. “He has no respect for me. He knew that this was just a pretense to talk business.” Margrethe felt a wave of disappointment to hear him say that the date had been a pretense to him, but she told herself that it wasn’t something to get upset about. Ubbe had taken her with him. If anything, this meant he was involving her in his business again.

“It’s not the end of the discussion,” she said. “And you have Torvi on your side, at least.”

Ubbe grew tense. “Excuse me?”

It took Margrethe a moment to realize that she needed to explain her thought process. “Oh, I meant it felt like she was on board with your plan already, so I thought maybe you had talked to her about it.”

Ubbe’s expression was blank for a moment as he looked at her. She waited a little for him to say something else, but he didn’t and turned away.

“Was I wrong?” she asked carefully.

“No,” Ubbe said hesitantly. Maybe he was worried that she would grow jealous. Margrethe knew she had a jealousy problem and it had made her lash out unfairly against him at the beginning of their marriage, but she tried to be better about it now.

“You two seem like you get along,” she stated politely. Ubbe grew even more tense at the comment and she gave up saying anything all together. 

Ubbe finally sighed. “I don’t understand why Björn doesn’t see Ivar as a problem. He is a danger to the whole business and legacy of our father. His recklessness will get all of us into trouble. I tried to let it go; I really did, but we’re at a point where it’s going to be more and more difficult to stop him. Mother always spoiled him as a child, so she will not do it. Hvitserk has no interest in taking on greater responsibilities, and Sigurd’s now in India and doesn’t care about this, no matter how much I talk to him. He just complains about our mother,” Ubbe concluded, and rolled his eyes. 

Out of all the brothers, Margrethe had seen Sigurd the least. When she had started working for Aslaug, he had mostly been away in London studying music theory. She had liked him at the time, but then Sigurd had stopped visiting and Margrethe had never found out why, though he did show up to their wedding wearing a batik shirt and shorts to piss off his mother, and later on he had gotten in a fight with Ivar. The wedding had been tense enough between Aslaug’s demands, all the important business people surrounding them, and her own small family desperately trying not to look out of place in the big banquet hall. She had felt so helpless and ashamed, and not even her bridesmaids had been able to console her.

Looking back on it, Margrethe tried to not feel bitter. Everyone was going through a lot. She sighed. “We will figure out what to do about Ivar; don’t worry.”

Ubbe turned to look at her again with that blank expression. At a different time, she might have teased him for looking like Hvitserk, but this was serious. He opened his mouth to say something, but then closed it again.

They did not speak for the rest of the trip. Margrethe half expected Ubbe to go back to the home office as he usually did before going to bed, but instead he followed her into their bedroom and they both got undressed. Margrethe couldn’t help but look over at him. It had been a while since they had sex, but that was understandable; the last few months had been busy for both of them.

Margrethe looked at Ubbe once they had gotten into bed. He was staring up at the ceiling, deep in thought. 

“Are you happy?” she asked.

He sighed and shrugged his shoulders, still not looking at her. “It was all right. I did my best.”

Margrethe wanted to reach out her hand and touch his cheek. Ubbe was too hard on himself. He clearly needed a distraction, but as she started to move, his eyes turned to her. She didn’t know why, but the way he looked at her made her pause. She smiled hesitantly instead. _ I love you, _ she wanted to tell him. _ We’re going to get through this, I know we can_. 

When she finally worked up the courage to reach out her arm, he spoke again. “Good night, Margrethe.” Then he turned on his side.

She lowered her hand onto the bed and gazed at his back. He always fell asleep quickly and she watched as his breathing became more even._ It’s fine_, she told herself. _ Baby steps_. She didn’t really know what got them into this slump, but they would find their way out of it. Today had been good. She just needed to lower her expectations a little.


	2. Margaritas

**[Freydis]: **Hey! I was wondering if you want to come over on Friday? I got the job and want to celebrate a bit! Girls only. 🙂

**[Freydis]: **Margrethe won't be there in case you are worried.😉

After almost a week of staying at her place, Hvitserk had decided to visit Berlin until his father left, and Thora was slightly relieved. Her tiny apartment was not meant for two people and Hvitserk's presence had proven to be more than a little distracting. Not that he had been particularly annoying—she had assumed his dirty socks and smoking might get tiresome quickly—but more in the sense that she had not really gotten anything done. Watching TV shows with him had just been more entertaining than doing homework. Same for cooking dinner together, which he barely knew anything about. Even when she had tried to work on something, his hands and mouth had always coaxed her back to bed again.

It was worrying. She could feel him creeping into her heart and making a nest there and worst of all, it felt so good that she couldn't get herself to care.

So she was glad for the distance between them. She needed some space to think and time to work, although she also had caught herself hoping that his father wouldn't decide to stick around for _ too _ long. At least Hvitserk messaged her semi-regularly, he had sent her more than a few drunken texts in the early hours of the morning, and the evening before, he had even called her and lamented that she wasn't there with him. It warmed her heart a little bit. But throughout the day he remained silent, which made her wonder if it was only the alcohol talking.

_ So much for casual dating_.

Freydis's invitation was a welcome distraction. Thora could have hung out with her other friends as well, but she didn't feel like it. She knew they would have just been fishing for information about her relationship with Hvitserk, who they had disapproved of from the beginning. Freydis, at least, wouldn’t judge her for that.

So on Friday, Thora picked up a bottle of champagne and made her way over to Freydis’s place, where a very happy Freydis came out to greet her. For a moment it felt like they would hug, but it passed as Thora handed her the champagne bottle. "Congratulations!"

“Thanks,” Freydis said with a big smile as she took the bottle and led her into the kitchen, where she took out a couple champagne glasses and filled them. The apartment was still impressive the second time around, but it also seemed a little more normal, and Freydis looked more relaxed and carefree than Thora had ever seen her. "I feel like everything is truly coming together for the better, for once."

Thora clinked her glass against Freydis’s. "To your new job," she said, and Freydis beamed. Then she gave a hesitant frown. "Out of curiosity, did you bring..."

Thora raised her eyebrows."Weed?" Freydis nodded a little sheepishly, and Thora took out one of two joints with a grin. "Don't worry, I have you covered."

With the first glasses of champagne finished, Freydis then turned her attention to the kitchen counter, where she had already set out ingredients for margaritas. “How’s Hvitserk?” she asked as she started to assemble the drinks.

Thora was a little surprised that she had asked. "Oh, um, he’s in Berlin. He wanted to get away from his dad." For some reason, she had thought Freydis would have known this already, but maybe Ivar hadn’t told her.

Freydis arched an eyebrow as she coated the rims of the margarita glasses in sugar. "I see," she said, and once again her voice was controlled and careful. "Have you met him?"

"I haven’t." Silence. "Have you?"

Freydis nodded, but she didn’t answer until she finished pouring the drinks and they headed out to the living room. “Ivar introduced me to him. He was...he was weird,” she finally said.

"Weird…how weird?" Thora had always wondered what Hvitserk's father would be like in person; if they had anything in common.

She shook her head. "He’s just...dirty, and he said some weird things. I don't think he is that good for Ivar," she said, though she didn’t elaborate.

Thora sighed and took out the joint. She lit it and inhaled deeply before passing it on to Freydis. "Hvitserk can't stand him."

"I can understand why," Freydis said as she took the joint. "I’m guessing you haven’t met their mother either?”

Thora shook her head. "We've only been dating for three months," and two weeks, but who was counting? "I don't think he likes her either."

When it came to his mother, it was a little more difficult to decipher Hvitserk’s feelings: just little phrases like ‘my mother, of course, wasn’t there,’ ‘my mother took sleeping pills to get through the car ride,’ ‘my mother didn’t care.’ Sometimes Thora got the feeling that Hvitserk was more angry with her than his father.

“You’ve met her. What is she like?” Thora asked. 

Freydis took a drag of the joint before answering. “Very regal, very cold. She didn’t like me.”

Thora took another sip of her drink. She glanced at her phone and realized that Hvitserk had sent her a message, and she unlocked her phone and checked it a little too quick for her own liking.

**[Hvitserk]**: wyd

Her first impulse was to give him an actual response, but instead she snapped a picture of her drink and hit send. Her attention went back to Freydis. “Has Ivar ever met your family?”

“Oh no, not yet. I’ve told my mom about him, but there just hasn’t been time.” Freydis didn’t need to explain herself in that regard; Thora’s relationship with Hvitserk wasn’t quite like theirs, but she had also been hesitant to introduce him to her family, or even tell them she was dating him at all. She had the feeling they would react like her friends, and she wasn’t ready for that. 

“Are you close to your mom?” Thora asked carefully.

Freydis hesitated. “Yeah, we’re pretty close. I never met my dad, so it’s just the two of us. She had a few boyfriends now and then, but nothing serious.” Thora wondered if the question had been too personal, but then the smile appeared back on Freydis’s face. “What about you? You’re from a big happy family?”

“Well, yes and no,” she said. “I have an older half-brother from my dad’s first marriage, but it doesn’t really matter. He is like a brother to me; just annoying.”

Freydis laughed and it sounded a little more genuine. “How much older is he?”

“He’s eleven years older than me, but he’s always been very proper. He’s married and has one kid with another on the way.” She took out her phone to show her the screensaver of her niece only to notice that Hvitserk had left messages again. She quickly removed the notification before handing her phone over to Freydis. 

Freydis took it with a smile and cooed at the picture of the baby. Then she suddenly furrowed her brows and returned the phone to Thora. “Hvitserk has sent you a message,” she said, sounding amused, and for some reason Thora could feel herself turning red. She checked her messages:

**[Hvitserk]:** ???

**[Hvitserk]:** where?

**[Hvitserk]:** babe

**[Hvitserk]:** what is going on

**[Hvitserk]:** where r u?

**[Hvitserk]:** 😏😏😏

**[Thora]:** With Freydis. Celebrating.

**[Thora]:** Are you okay?

She typed the answer quickly and then put the phone away again. It felt rude to be on her phone at someone else's house, but Freydis didn’t seem to mind. She just giggled and gave Thora a look.

“You’re an only child,” Thora said, trying to pick up the conversation again.

Freydis nodded. “Yes, and it was a little overwhelming and weird when Ivar explained his family to me. Having four older siblings seems like a lot.”

Her phone buzzed again, and this time Thora managed to stop herself from answering. “Hvitserk once tried to explain their family to me and it got really confusing. He told me a little about Sigurd, the one who is in London, I think, but it all was very convoluted.”

The phone buzzed once more, and this time Thora turned the vibrations off. Her eyes moved quickly over Hvitserk’s last message.

**[Hvitserk]:** ?

She put it away.

“Ivar hates Sigurd,” Freydis said. “I don’t know why exactly, but he really hates him. He said Sigurd is jealous because their mom likes him better, but I feel like there’s more to it than that.”

Thora shouldn’t have been as surprised by this as she actually was. Hvitserk had told her about tense family dinners with Sigurd and Ivar always at each other’s throats, but she had assumed it was just because they were close in age. Hvitserk, on the other hand, seemed to have a good relationship with both of them, and occasionally went to concerts and got high with Sigurd in London.

It was silent for a moment. With the first round of margaritas finished and Thora’s stomach beginning to growl, Freydis suggested heading back to the kitchen for food and more drinks, where Thora assembled grilled cheese sandwiches while Freydis prepared an alarmingly large margarita pitcher.

"Tell me how you met Hvitserk," Freydis said after they had sat down to eat. Even with her mouth full of sandwich, she still somehow managed to look elegant.

"I met him at a festival in Germany," she began. Hvitserk had sat by his tent with a beer bottle in hand and an impassive expression. Her heart fluttered again and she had to stop herself from thinking about it by taking a bite of her own sandwich. Most of the contents spilled onto the plate, and she cursed herself silently.

"Oh, Wacken, right? Hvitserk told us. He said you approached him."

Two things surprised Thora about what Freydis had said: first, that Hvitserk had found it important enough to tell other people, and second, that Freydis had remembered that detail. It made her wonder what other things Freydis remembered about her. "I did,” she said.

"Why did you do it?" Freydis asked curiously. She had the feeling that Freydis didn't quite get why anybody would want to date Hvitserk, but it was fine; Thora didn't get why anybody would want to date Ivar either.

"His tent was next to the one I had with my friends,” she recalled. “There were some dudes nearby who were just being assholes, and they went and tried to start a fight with a friend of mine, but then Hvitserk stepped in. He was very, very stoned and he had this huge smile on his face, and the guy trying to start a fight was quite tall and broad. And I was already thinking we would have to call the first aid team, but then the guy actually dropped it and left."

She still had not figured out what exactly had happened. Hvitserk had put his arm around the guy's shoulder and just smiled and said something in German, and the guy had walked away. Both her and her friends had been surprised, but Hvitserk had been so stoned he had just wandered off afterwards. Thora couldn't help but be curious, so she had approached him the following night. At first it had seemed foolish; he clearly didn't remember her. She had talked on and on, trying to fill the silence with something interesting. But then he had offered her a beer and some weed, and at some point his hand had slipped around her waist.

"He had just seemed nice," she finished, shaking her head at the memory. She really was turning into a love sick teenager again. "And he was willing to share his weed with us afterwards."

"Oh, I see." Freydis's grin widened and Thora's ears grew slightly warm. 

"It wasn't because of the weed," she said defensively.

"Of course not." Freydis's smile was disarming, and Thora looked away first, focusing intently on whatever was left of her sandwich.

"How did you meet Ivar?" Thora finally decided to ask as they went back to the living room, margaritas in hand.

"Oh, we got stuck in an elevator together," Freydis said casually as she sipped her drink. "We were there for an hour because the firefighters had trouble getting to us."

Thora’s eyes widened. "An elevator, Jesus, that—" she wanted to say that sounded tedious, but then reminded herself that Freydis was Ivar's girlfriend, which meant she actually had to like him at least a little bit.

As if Freydis could read her thoughts, she started to grin. Thora shouldn't have asked further, but just couldn't stop herself. She blamed it on the alcohol. "What did you even talk about for an hour?”

A little of her resentment had slipped out. Freydis shrugged. "It was fine; we found plenty of topics. He told me about his childhood."

Talking about himself for an hour certainly sounded like something Ivar would do. Thora shook her head and Freydis started to laugh. 

Thora raised her eyebrows. "What?"

"Nothing, it's just funny how much you dislike Ivar. No, don’t deny it; I won’t be offended.”

Thora stared at her, and not for the first time, she wished she had a better poker face. “I wasn’t going to deny it,” she said dryly.

Freydis gave her a playful smile and took another sip of her margarita. “Tell me why you don’t like him.”

Thora sighed. “So, the first time I stayed the night at their place, I had been dating Hvitserk for maybe a month. We were just hanging out in his room and smoking, and then at some point Ivar came home and he knocked on the door because he wanted to smoke with Hvitserk or something, but Hvitserk told him no, because he was with me.”

“Oh, he must not have liked that,” Freydis murmured.

“He didn’t. The next morning, I was in the kitchen with Hvitserk having breakfast, and Ivar came out and started complaining to Hvitserk about me staying at their place. I was sitting right there and he was talking like…like I was invisible, or something. And I got annoyed, of course; I told him, ‘I don’t know you and I don’t know what your deal is, but you can speak to me directly if you’ve got a problem with me, and not to your brother.’ Then he stormed off.”

There was a slight frown on Freydis’s face as she listened to the story. Thora hesitated, wondering if she should tell her the next part. “I think the worst part about it was that Hvitserk just…sat there the whole time. He didn’t tell Ivar to leave me alone or go away or anything. He ate his breakfast like it was no big deal. And after Ivar left, I was upset, and I asked him why he didn’t do anything, and he just shrugged. ‘Oh, he’s just like that sometimes,’ he said. ‘Ivar’s mean to me too. You shouldn’t take it personally.’” She looked down at the glass in her hands and swirled the liquid around. “So no, I don’t like him very much. But maybe Hvitserk’s right; maybe I’m just too sensitive.” 

“I don’t think you are,” Freydis said thoughtfully. “And I’m sorry for what Ivar said to you.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Still.” Freydis poured herself another drink and gave Thora a speculative look. She was quiet for a moment. “I took Ivar’s virginity,” she suddenly announced.

Thora nearly choked on her own drink. “Really?”

She looked very pleased with herself. “Mm hmm.”

Thora knew she shouldn’t ask; she really, really shouldn’t. But she was starting on her third margarita at this point and her judgment was more than a little off-base, and if both of them were already in the mood to share maybe more than they ought to, well...“How was it?”

“Oh.” Freydis frowned. “He was nervous. Very, very nervous. I think he was worried he wouldn’t impress me, or I would think he wasn’t enough of a man, or something like that. You know, he’s very self-conscious about his body.”

None of that sounded like very much fun, though Thora managed to keep herself from actually saying that out loud. Freydis had more to tell her, anyway: “It’s better now. Usually. But he can’t always do it and then he gets frustrated. Or when he can do it, he pushes himself too hard physically. I wish he wouldn’t do that.” She sounded increasingly upset. “Sometimes I want to say to him, why are you doing this to yourself; we don’t have to do this if it hurts you, and I _ know _ it does. But he’s too proud to listen, I think.”

She stopped talking after that, and Thora suddenly felt terrible that she had ever believed that Freydis was only dating Ivar for his money. “I think Hvitserk once had a threesome with Margrethe and Ubbe,” she confessed to Freydis, unable to bear the silence any longer.

Now it was Freydis’s turn to choke. “What?”

Thora’s face was very warm, and it wasn’t just from the alcohol. “Well, he didn’t tell me directly,” she said hastily. “But Hvitserk likes talking about sex a lot; he’s not embarrassed at all by it. And one time he told me he had a threesome, only when I started asking questions about what it was like, he suddenly stopped talking about it and tried to change the subject. The most he would tell me was that it was with a woman and another man, and it was a few years ago. And then I remembered that he’d also told me he’d hooked up with Margrethe just before she started dating Ubbe; nothing too serious, but when Ubbe found out they’d been together, he wasn’t jealous or upset at all. He seemed kind of...excited, actually. And…um…”

Freydis was covering her mouth to hide her laughter. “We could ask Margrethe.”

“No!” Thora blushed even harder. “I’m not sure I want to know.”

Freydis’s smile was full of mischief. “Okay, _ you _ don’t have to ask her, but _ I _ can,” she teased. She slid from the couch down to the floor. “I like that we can do this,” she said. “That we can talk about these things. I talk to my mom, but I don’t know if she gets it. What these people are like. It’s hard to explain.”

“I know what you mean.” Thora took another sip of her margarita. She was still feeling brave enough to bring up subjects she wouldn’t talk about normally. “Maybe this is too personal for me to say. I’ve never been in your situation, but I think you should talk to Ivar about the...the problem with sex, even if you don’t think he’d listen. Because this isn’t fair to either of you, and it’s not going to get better unless you talk about it. Maybe he’ll surprise you.”

Freydis didn’t look convinced, but she nodded thoughtfully before setting aside her drink. Then she pulled out her phone. “Look,” she said brightly, scrolling through her photos. She showed Thora a series of abstract paintings hanging in a gallery. “This is where I’m going to be working! I start on Tuesday. No more bartending, no more cleaning apartments…I can’t wait.” She smiled to herself. “You’re studying computer science, right?”

“Yeah, and I help my dad out with his business, fixing phones and computers and stuff.” She giggled a little. “Hvitserk drops his phone all the time, you know. He kept buying new ones because of it. I fixed it for him one time and he acted as though I was like...a genius, or something. It’s just my job; it’s not really as big of a deal as he makes it out to be. But I’m good at it.”

“I think he really does admire you,” Freydis said approvingly. “You should see the way he looks at you.” She plucked the glass out of Thora’s hand and refilled it from her enormous pitcher, which at that point was a little less than half full. 

Thora couldn’t stop herself from smiling. “I like him a lot,” she said shyly, and accepted her glass back from Freydis. “You’re not at all what I thought you’d be like,” she blurted out. “When I met you, I thought you looked really stuck up, but you’re so _ nice_, and I’m really happy for you for getting this job.” She suddenly felt the urge to hug her, and so she did. 

Freydis giggled and took out her phone. "Wanna take a selfie together?" 

Thora quickly shook her head. "I’m really not that photogenic."

"That’s not true; everyone can look good in a selfie. Here, let me show you." And just like that Freydis opened the camera app and tried to capture them both. Thora could see her face in the camera. She still had a little bit of sauce on her face, which she wiped away before giving into Freydis' game. Freydis tried a few angles, but stopped after moment. "The lighting is bad here; let's go over by the window."

Thora raised her brows. "Seriously?"

Freydis actually winked at her. "Don't you want to know my secrets?"

It was playful and cute in a way Thora had not seen Freydis act before. She stared at her for a moment before getting up and following her over to the window. 

"To make a good selfie, you need good natural lighting and you have to angle the camera down at your face,” Freydis explained very seriously. She put an arm around Thora’s shoulders and tried to get the angle right, but it was nearly impossible since Thora was so much taller than her. Thora laughed and put an arm around her.

“Should I hold the camera?” she suggested.

“No.” Freydis kept moving the phone around, still working on getting angle perfect. Her expression was so serious that Thora had to laugh. She pressed her head against Freydis and giggled.

“You have to hold still,” Freydis chided her, but not meanly.

“But shouldn’t I also laugh and look happy?”

“If you want to.” Freydis ended up pressing the phone in Thora’s hand and moving her arm around. “But you can also do serious ones; that what Ivar likes to do.”

Thora furrowed her brows. “You guys do selfies together?”

“Of course.” Freydis sounded almost shocked that she would ask such a thing. Thora tried to imagine Ivar standing in front of the mirror and trying out his angles. She couldn’t quite picture it. Then again, he was pretty vain, so maybe she could. 

Freydis nudged her side. “Concentrate!”

Thora couldn’t help it; she started to giggle, and once she started, Freydis began laughing too. They took a few pictures, and then they took a whole lot more. She wasn’t entirely sure how they managed to accomplish it, but by the end of the whole "photoshoot" there were actually a few decent ones. From there, the rest of the evening was a bit of a blur: there were definitely more margaritas involved, and more weed, and plenty of laughing and not an inconsiderable amount of crying at certain points. 

Hvitserk had left a few more messages for her throughout the night, none of them terribly intelligible, and she felt a little bad that it had taken her so long to answer them. Thora hoped he was doing all right. She sent him one of the pictures with Freydis and almost typed something along the lines of ‘missing you’, but erased it quickly. She wasn’t that far gone.

She was far gone enough, however, that she eventually ended up spending the night on Freydis’s couch, curled up under a ridiculously luxurious fleece blanket and feeling very warm and content. In the morning they made breakfast together, and weirdly enough, it felt familiar, as if this wasn't the first time they had done this. Thora wasn't too sure what happened that night, but somehow it felt like they were friends now.

* * *

"You have reached Ubbe Lothbrok. I cannot take your call right now. Leave a message and your number after the tone and I will call back as soon as possible."

Margrethe's hands tightened around her mobile phone. It was 2 pm on a Thursday. Ubbe hadn't been home since Tuesday.

She waited for the beep and gathered her thoughts. This was her tenth message. After having already cried and yelled into the phone, she wanted to try a more neutral tone. A calm voice was more convincing and easier to take seriously.

"Hey, it's me again. Sorry for yelling earlier. I’m just very worried. Maybe you’re on a business trip and I forgot. Just—just call me back. I’m worried about you and I just want to know that you are alive and well. Hope you are doing okay. I l-"

A second beep cut off her message. Annoyed, Margrethe stared down at Ubbe's name on her phone. Before she could burst into tears or call him again, she tossed the phone onto the sofa and moved back to her calendar. Usually, she had a good idea of when and where Ubbe was traveling for business, and this surely had to be a business trip. Maybe it had slipped through during the last months; Ubbe could grow very sullen when stressed. Or maybe he had simply forgotten to tell her.

She had realized something was wrong on Wednesday evening. After Ubbe had not shown up for dinner the night before, she had gone to bed slightly drunk around 10 pm. She had assumed that he must have come home late and slept on the couch, which was a thing he did often when he didn't want to wake her, and then left before breakfast, which was also not unusual. She had gone about her day and sent him a message. He hadn’t answered. When he didn't come home in the evening, she had started to worry. She messaged him a few more times and still received no response. Not even the arrows had turned blue.

It was after 11 pm when she had noticed his missing suitcase and clothes after combing through the whole house in search for some hint of his whereabouts, and that had calmed her a little bit. At least she knew he hadn’t been kidnapped or killed—a real possibility in his line of work.

She had called him once, asking him to call her back, and then she took a sleeping pill and went to bed. But today she was worried and a little bit angry. She left messages again, begging him to respond. She skimmed through their entire Whatsapp conversation but found no explanation. The last time Ubbe had messaged her had been on Saturday, when she had asked him to pick up toilet paper from the store. His answer had been a simple, clipped 'ok'.

Margrethe sighed. It was probably nothing. She was just acting paranoid like Ubbe always said. _ Everything was fine_. Still, she couldn’t stop herself from sending a message to Torvi and Björn, even though it was a little bit embarrassing. Afterwards, she took a cigarette from her secret stash and moved to the backyard to smoke. Ubbe had forbidden her to smoke in the house.

The cold wet weather and nicotine calmed her somewhat as she formulated a plan. She couldn’t go on like this, no matter how hard she tried. She knew Ubbe would be disappointed in her when he found out, and she already felt sorry. She should rise above the heavy feeling in her stomach and make him proud, but she couldn’t. So after finishing the cigarette and hiding it in her secret ashtray, she changed into her best clothes and took the car.

It took her about an hour and a half to arrive at her destination. Aslaug lived a little further outside of the city, but to the south instead of the north. Ubbe had never said anything about it, but she was certain they had moved to the other side of the city on purpose.

Going to Aslaug was a dangerous idea. Ubbe wouldn’t like it and there was a big chance that Aslaug wouldn’t know anything anyway. After all, Ubbe had distanced himself from the family in the last year, but with no answer from Torvi or Björn, she was Margrethe's only hope.

The Lothbrok estate was a stately older house hidden behind a tall cement wall. Margrethe checked her hair and makeup in the rearview mirror before she rang the bell. She tried to look as much at ease as possible as she looked up into the camera.

“How can I help you?” the voice of a younger female servant asked over the intercom. 

Margrethe brushed her hair behind her ear. “It’s me, Margrethe Lothbrok. I want to talk to Aslaug, if that is possible. I’m her daughter-in-law,” she clarified.

It was quiet for a long time. Margrethe was almost certain that Aslaug would reject her, but the voice surprised her.

“Come in,” she finally said, and opened the main gate so Margrethe could drive through. As usual, the gardens looked picture perfect even though it was close to autumn and some bushes were already losing leaves. The first time Margrethe had entered the estate, the whole display had overwhelmed her: the beautiful old house surrounded by a huge garden. She remembered standing on the porch and looking out at that garden the evening Ubbe had announced their engagement. She had been crying because of Aslaug. At least someday the estate might be hers, she had told herself. The thought had been a comfort back then.

She parked her car next to one of Aslaug’s Mercedes and quickly headed to the main door. Before Margrethe could even knock, Aslaug stepped outside with her arms crossed and a cold expression on her face. She shut the door behind her and Margrethe’s heart sank a little. She wouldn’t be invited in.

“Can I help you?” Aslaug asked coolly.

Margrethe was stunned. As always, she felt small in her mother-in-law’s presence. It had been a bad idea to come here. “Good afternoon, Aslaug,” she stammered, unable to skip the pleasantries.

“I don’t have time for this.” Today Aslaug seemed more thin skinned than usual, and it reminded Margrethe of the few times that her husband had been back in town. He had never visited the estate, but it had not stopped Aslaug from becoming stressed. She wondered if this was what had happened.

“I wanted to ask if you knew anything about Ubbe’s whereabouts,” Margrethe finally managed to say. Her ears grew hot. She felt like a failure and waited for Aslaug’s sneer, or perhaps a triumphant smile, but her expression remained cold. She eyed Margrethe from head to toe before answering, “Why should I know?”

Margrethe’s heart sank further. Just like she had expected, she had made a fool of herself in front of Ubbe’s mother for nothing. Ubbe would be so angry with her when he came back and this all turned out to be just a great misunderstanding, which it certainly was.

She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. He’s been gone for a few days and I can’t remember why. I thought maybe it was work related, so you might know.” By the end of her sentence, she had to look at the ground. She focused on Aslaug’s shoes, a pretty pair of sandals, trying her best to remain cool. She was Ubbe’s wife, after all, and not Aslaug’s insecure little assistant anymore.

“Well, I don’t,” Aslaug replied, though somehow she didn’t sound as cold. Then she sighed. “When my husband left without telling me,” she said slowly, as if she was thinking carefully about every word, “I checked his bank account to see where he had been.”

Margrethe looked up in surprise. Had Aslaug just offered her help? 

Aslaug pursed her lips. She didn’t seem to happy about it. “I assume that this is all,” she said, and turned to go back inside.

Margrethe nodded. “Thank you!”

Aslaug didn’t look back. The door opened and closed behind her and Margrethe was left alone on the porch, somehow feeling better and worse at the same time. She quickly got back in the car and headed home. On the way, Björn finally replied to her message, though all he said was that he had no idea where Ubbe was. She was surprised that he even had cared enough to answer.

She knew all of Ubbe’s bank accounts, of course, and she still remembered every password and code. Back home, it didn’t take her long to go through them and find some new expenses. Ubbe had bought two tickets to Rome two weeks ago and booked a hotel there. No, not any hotel—the hotel they had stayed in during their honeymoon.

Margrethe blinked in surprise. He had also rented a car, and yesterday evening, he had spent some money at a restaurant.

The world was starting to shake. Margrethe clutched her coffee cup, a wedding present with golden cursive font that said ‘Mrs.’ Ubbe had his own.

_ Everything was fine. There’s a logical explanation for this. _ She was just overreacting. Ubbe would come back home in a few days and roll his eyes at her stupidity. _ ‘Sweetie, what did you think I was doing? _’

Her phone buzzed. Ubbe had replied. Quickly Margrethe unlocked her phone and looked at the message. Her heart beat loudly in her chest.

**[Ubbe💓]:** Hi, I am currently in Rome with Torvi. I will be back in three weeks and I would like for you to have moved out by then. I want a divorce.

She blinked, trying to understand his message. Before she could feel anything, her usual mechanisms set in. _ Everything was fine_. _ She was just seeing things_. She needed to remain rational and not do anything stupid. Ubbe wouldn’t want her to be stupid or angry. It would annoy him and she didn’t want to annoy him.

She got up from her seat, took the cup, and moved to the kitchen, where she cleaned it methodically. Tears formed in her eyes as she scrubbed over the ‘Mrs.’ _ Everything is fine_. She needed to be stronger. She looked at the ‘Mrs.’ as she held it in her hand.

It was then that the full implications of his message hit her. The realization felt as if someone had turned up the volume on everything. The sound of the water in her sink felt too loud. The water was unbearably hot. The tears rolled down her face like rivers. She breathed in and out, but she could feel herself losing control anyway.

A scream left her mouth, and then another, and before she knew it, she was hanging over the kitchen sink yelling. When she finally stopped, hours had passed and it was getting dark outside. Still shaking and very tired, she went to the living room and sat down. Her first coherent thought was about the coffee cup. She remembered its golden engraving. What would happen to it now?

* * *

Thora arrived at the station five minutes too early, which meant that she would probably have to wait thirty minutes. Hvitserk wasn’t known for his punctuality. She checked her phone and played with the idea of sending him a message. As she opened the messenger app, her eyes automatically went to Freydis’ last reply and the selfies they had taken together during ladies’ night. Freydis would have been at her new job at the art gallery for about two weeks now, and she hoped it was going well for her. 

Before she made up her mind to message Hvitserk, a pair of arms had sneaked around her body and lifted her up. Thora yelped, fighting against the intruder before she smelled Hvitserk’s expensive cologne and tobacco. He laughed into her ear and pressed his face into her hair and as usual the whole world turned soft, her thoughts disappearing into the background.

He set her back onto the ground and turned her to him. She had just managed to tell him hello when his lips met hers. It wasn’t a deep kiss, not even a hungry one. She was actually surprised by its softness. He let go of her, his hands pressed against her cheeks, finally giving her an opportunity to take him in. He looked tired, as if he had not slept for days, which he probably hadn’t. His lips were dry and chapped, but he looked happy and had a wide grin on his face.

“Hello to you too,” he answered, making her laugh.

“You look like you had fun.” Thora tried to keep her tone light and teasing; neither jealous nor worried. Cool was what she was aiming for.

“It was all right. A little boring, actually.”

She raised her brows. “Really?”

They started walking down the harbour towards the restaurant where they were supposed to meet Freydis and Ivar for dinner. Thora searched in her pocket for lip balm as Hvitserk shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah, don’t know what it was; somehow Berlin wasn’t as charming as usual.”

Thora tried to look not too pleased about this, but she still couldn’t help but feel happy. Maybe he had missed her. Maybe his drunk calls throughout the week from Berlin had meant something after all.

“Sorry to hear that.” She handed him her lip balm. He stopped with an almost surprised look on his face before taking it in his hand.

“It’s fine. It’s not like it was bad or anything.” He put on the lip balm and handed it back. As soon as she had put it back into her pocket, she heard his phone buzz. “Ivar’s at the restaurant already and he’s got a table for us,” he announced as he checked his messages. “Looks like Freydis is running late.”

“Well, hopefully she’s not _ too _ late,” she said before realizing that Hvitserk might take offense at the dig against Ivar, but he just laughed and she relaxed. “Look, I know he’s your brother, but isn’t it enough that you already share an apartment? We have to hang out with him in other places too?”

He looked at her blankly. “I mean, yeah,” he said. “He’s my brother.”

Thora decided that perhaps it was best to let that particular line of questioning go. At any rate, she reasoned that dinner couldn’t be completely terrible if Freydis was there as well. Furthermore, maybe she was being unfairly judgmental of Ivar; maybe he had good qualities she hadn’t seen yet, or he’d been in an especially bad mood for whatever reason when she’d met him before. Maybe she just needed to give him another chance.

She managed to hold onto this thought for about the first two minutes after they arrived at the restaurant and sat down at the table with Ivar. Then she realized that, in fact, her first impression of him had been entirely correct and he was just an asshole after all.

“By the way, Dad smoked all your weed while you were gone,” Ivar informed Hvitserk over the first round of drinks. “Hope you don’t mind.”

Hvitserk set his drink down on the table with a thump. “He—you told him where I keep it?”

Ivar shrugged. “Well, you were off in—where did you go, again?”

“Berlin,” Hvitserk said shortly.

“You were busy fucking around in Berlin, so you weren’t smoking it. And it’s _ Dad_; it wasn’t like I gave it all away to some random girl.”

“You still could have asked,” Thora spoke up, ignoring the obvious jab at her. 

Ivar rolled his eyes. “He’s fine with it. Right, Hvitserk?”

Hvitserk did not seem fine with it, but then he lowered his head. “Whatever. Fuck you.”

“See? All good,” he told Thora. Then he took out his phone and frowned. “Where is she?” he muttered to himself. “I told her dinner was at 7.”

“Maybe she’s coming from her new job,” Thora suggested.

Ivar glanced up at her with a strangely self-satisfied smile. “Ah, there she is,” he said suddenly, looking past her. To Thora’s surprise, he grabbed his crutch, stood up, and walked over to the entrance of the restaurant, where Freydis was looking around uncertainly. Thora turned her head and watched as Ivar stepped close to Freydis and grabbed her by the wrist as he kissed her cheek. Hvitserk was saying something to her, but for some reason all Thora could focus on was Ivar’s hand wrapped around Freydis’s wrist. For a split second, she thought she saw Freydis try to pull away from him. Then she stopped.

“Thora?” Hvitserk flicked the back of her hand with his fingers. “Are you listening?”

“What? Sorry.” She finally tore her gaze away from the restaurant entrance. Ivar still had his hand on Freydis’s wrist and he had leaned in and was speaking quietly to her.

“I need to ask a favor of you,” Hvitserk said. There was a little smile playing around the corner of his lips. “You remember how I told you that I’m banned from Luxembourg? Long story.”

“Right.” She fought the urge to look over her shoulder again.

“Anyway, I’ve got a friend over there, and I need you to deliver a package from me. No big deal—I just can’t go myself. But I’d pay for the train ticket and the hotel. You should have a vacation anyway; go have a good time in the city.”

Something about the casualness of his tone caught her attention. “You can’t just mail the package?”

“Nah,” he said easily. “I don’t trust the postal service not to lose it. I want to be sure it arrives, and I know I can count on you.” He took her hand and kissed it. “Please? Do this for me?”

The question was on the tip of her tongue: _ what sort of a package is this? _ She opened her mouth to ask, but then she stopped herself. _ Do you really want to know? _

“I’ll do it,” she said on impulse as Ivar and Freydis came back to the table, and she watched Hvitserk’s smile turn into a broad grin. Then she opened her mouth in surprise when she saw Freydis’s face. She had obviously been crying and her face was red and splotchy, but when she caught Thora’s eye, she gave her the tiniest shake of her head, and the question died in her throat.

“I’ll be right back; I’m going to the bathroom,” Thora announced, and Freydis caught on right away, as she knew she would.

“Me too,” she said, and followed Thora into the bathroom.

“What happened?” Thora demanded the moment the door was closed.

Freydis set her purse down and rested her hands on the counter, staring at herself in the mirror. “I was fired,” she said finally. Her voice was controlled as always and she didn’t seem like she was about to start crying, but Thora knew her well enough by now to hear the undercurrent of shock and anger in her tone.

“But why?” she asked blankly. “You told me everything was going well!”

“They wouldn’t tell me!” Freydis said sharply, her composure beginning to fray. “I begged my supervisor, just tell me what I did wrong; let me fix it. She said—” and now she really was starting to cry—“she just said, ‘Ask your boyfriend.’”

“Ask your…” Thora shook her head, bewildered by the implication. “No way. You don’t think…”

Freydis grabbed her arm. “Don’t say anything,” she warned her. “Not to Hvitserk, not to anybody. You can’t. I have to handle this.”

“But why would Ivar _ do _ something like that?” Thora burst out. “_How _ would he do something like that?”

Freydis pushed her hair behind her ear and wiped her eyes. “He didn’t want me to take the job,” she told her. “Then, when I did take it, he told me to quit, and I said no. He thought...well, he had it in his head that we wouldn’t be able to spend as much time together, or that it would look like he wasn’t taking good enough care of me, or...something. So I think maybe—maybe he did something; threatened the owner. You know what this family is like. I don’t know.”

Thora curled her hands into fists without thinking about it, almost too angry to speak. All she could think about was Ivar’s weird little smile when she had mentioned Freydis’s job. _ He had already known. _ “He doesn’t get to decide that,” she said fiercely. “You’re his girlfriend; it doesn’t give him the right to dictate everything you do.”

“I know.” She sniffled, trying to regain her composure. “I don’t know for sure yet; I haven’t asked him. But promise me you won’t say anything. Please?”

“All right,” Thora said reluctantly, but it took every ounce of self-control she possessed to keep herself from saying something once she and Freydis returned to the table and took their seats. Freydis said she would handle it, and Thora believed her—but if it were her, she couldn’t imagine sitting down next to Ivar and acting as though everything was okay. If he had done it...if he had really gotten her fired—

Ivar was going on and on about something she truly did not care about, and in that moment, all she could think about was how good it would feel to get up, walk around to the other side of the table, and punch him right then and there and wipe that smug smile right off his face. In the next moment, she regretted even thinking about it. Hvitserk had, after all, told her in his usual perfunctory fashion about Ivar’s condition, and the thought that she could seriously injure him made her stomach turn. 

“Hey.” Ivar snapped his fingers in her face. “What are you looking at? You got a problem with me or what?”

Thora blinked. He’d noticed that she had been staring at him. “Yeah, I do, actually,” she snapped back. “I don’t like you. I don’t like how rude you are, I don’t like how you treat Hvitserk, I don’t like how you talk to me like you think you’re better than me because you’re not, and I don’t like your mustache; I think it looks stupid.”

The last part seemed to offend him the most. “It does _ not _ look stupid,” he protested. He scowled at her. “I don’t understand why Hvitserk is even wasting his time with you. It can’t be for your looks.”

“Ivar,” Freydis said suddenly. “That’s enough.”

To Thora’s surprise, Ivar immediately stopped talking, though he continued to glower at her from across the table. He raised one hand to touch his mustache, and then put it down when he saw she was watching.

“Well,” Hvitserk said brightly. “Should we order?”

Freydis pushed her chair back from the table. “I’m really sorry about this, but I’m not feeling well,” she said quietly. “I think I’m going to go home.”

“I’ll go with you,” Ivar said quickly, grabbing her hand.

For a moment, Thora thought Freydis would tell him no, but then she nodded, took her purse, and stood up. “Have a good night,” she told them. Ivar followed after her, though not without shooting Thora one last glare.

She and Hvitserk sat there in silence for a moment after they were gone. “So…” he said hopefully. “You still want to order something?”

“You can have my dinner,” she told him. “I’ve lost my appetite.”

* * *

Ivar kept a tight grip on her hand as they left the restaurant and took the subway back to her apartment, and though Freydis wasn’t really listening at that point, he continued his lengthy diatribe against Thora the entire way. She wanted him to stop talking and just see her to the door of the building and then go home, but he insisted on coming inside with her. Before, she had found this sort of thing charming—a sign that he wanted to spend more time with her; that he didn’t just keep her around to show her off—but now it felt intrusive, as though he couldn’t let her have her space in the way he sometimes very much wanted his own. She had always allowed it, too, even when she was tired or not especially in the mood for his company. She listened to all his complaints, managed his moods, and gave him advice when he wanted it and affection when he needed it. Refusing to quit the job had been the first time she had ever really told him _ no _ to anything that mattered; the first time she had attempted to have something that was hers alone.

But while she was thinking about him, he was busy thinking about himself. Once inside her apartment, he headed straight for the mirror in her bedroom, still agonizing out loud over what Thora had said about his mustache. She slowly took off her shoes in the front hallway. She didn’t want this confrontation right now; she knew she was still too emotional to handle her own responses and it would be better to wait a day or two before bringing up the subject. But at the same time, she couldn’t stand the thought of pretending that nothing had happened and everything was fine between them. No, it had to be tonight.

She tried to gather her thoughts and calm herself as she walked down the hall towards the bedroom. She let herself consider the possibility that her suspicions about him were wrong and he’d had nothing to do with her getting fired; that her supervisor’s comment about her boyfriend had been some sort of misunderstanding. The problem was that she knew him, and she knew exactly what he would do if she confronted him: he would scoff at first and deny it, but then he would not quite be able to look at her. And after that...she didn’t know. But she had to find out.

She stepped into her bedroom without a word, and Ivar didn’t even look up when she came in. His entire attention was on his reflection in the mirror. “The mustache looks fine,” he was muttering to himself. “There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s fine.”

“Ivar,” Freydis said quietly.

“She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Who does she think she is? She’s just some random girl Hvitserk met at a music festival.” He frowned. “But if she thinks it’s stupid, maybe other people think that too. Hvitserk’s mustache looks kind of stupid. He should get rid of it.”

“Ivar!” she snapped, her patience finally gone. “It doesn’t matter!”

He looked up, startled. “Of _ course _ it matters! She said it looked stupid!”

“We have to talk,” she said coolly. “Are you done?”

He reluctantly turned away from the mirror and walked over to her, close enough that she had to stop herself from taking a step back. “All right, then,” he said, and there was a softness in his tone that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. “Talk.”

“Tell me the truth,” she said, forcing herself to keep her voice steady. “Did you get me fired?”

He looked away for just a second, and that was all the answer she needed. “Of course not,” he blustered. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

Now she was shaking with anger, unable to keep it out of her voice any longer. “If you have any respect for me at all, then don’t lie to my face.”

“Fine,” he snapped. “I did it. Happy?”

She slapped him then. He took half a step back, and then moved forward with such speed that she found herself quickly stepping backwards. “You had no right to do that,” she told him, starting to cry. “You had no right.”

“And _ you _ didn’t listen when I told you to quit! You left me no other choice!”

It was so absurd that she almost wanted to laugh. “No other choice,” she repeated in disbelief. “No other choice but take away something I wanted, something that made me happy, something that was important to me. How could you?” She almost said, _ I’m finished with you; get out, I never want to see you again_, but then the thought struck her: Ivar was the one paying for her apartment. She couldn’t tell him to leave, and from the look on his face, he didn’t seem inclined to go anywhere at the moment. He just stood there in the middle of the room, watching her. His cheek had started to turn red where she had hit him.

It had been so easy for her to forget exactly who he was. Out shopping together, or having dinner, or lying in bed beside him, she hadn’t let herself think about any of those things: the phone calls that came at all hours of the night, his sudden trips out of the country, the brass knuckles she had once spotted by accident in his desk drawer. But she remembered all of them now. _ Oh, I manage the shipping logistics for the company, _ he had told her early on in their relationship, but she had never asked him, _ logistics for _ what_, exactly? _ She hadn’t asked because he wouldn’t have told her, and because she already had an idea. _ Stupid, stupid, stupid. _

“We can figure this out later,” she heard herself saying. “It’s been a long day.”

“Yeah,” he said quietly. After a moment, he took another step towards her, though this time his pace was slower. She stopped herself from moving away from him, even though every instinct told her to do so. Instead, she stayed still and let him come close enough to caress her cheek and plant a kiss on her forehead. Then, to her relief, he turned and walked out of the apartment without another word.

Once he was gone, she stood frozen in place for almost a minute. Her heart was thumping wildly and her back was slightly sticky with sweat. She finally forced herself to go lock the door behind him and then sat down at the kitchen table and buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

When she was finished, she got up to pour herself a drink. She opened up the cupboard and realized that all the glasses and bowls and plates had been bought by Ivar. So had the kitchen table she had been sitting at, and the couch and chairs in the living room, and most of the clothes hanging in her closet, and all the designer bags and shoes. The sleek hardwood floors, the high ceilings, the huge windows. Even the view of the harbor that she loved so much felt like it belonged to him.

Freydis felt like a fool then. She had been so happy at the time to accept his gifts, thrilled by the prospect of being able to go to all the expensive restaurants she never could have afforded on her own, secretly impressed by every occasion where he had pulled out his credit card to buy something for her without even glancing at the price. She had accepted it all without question. She should have known that eventually he would send in the bill.

And now, of course, he had left her with limited options. She had quit her side jobs already in order to work at the gallery. Now that job was gone too, and with the way word got around in the art world, finding another position like it in Copenhagen would be nearly impossible. She would have to move back in with her mom and go back to bartending and cleaning apartments. The very thought of it made her angry with him all over again. 

She circled back to her room and changed into an old pair of pajamas, one of the few items in her closet that Ivar hadn’t bought for her. Then she curled up on the couch with a bottle of tequila and stared out the window. _ You wouldn’t like it if I did this to you_, she told Ivar in her head. _ If I took away something that was important to you; something that you worked so hard for. You wouldn’t like it at all. _

She suddenly thought of something else as well: Margrethe, sitting in the same spot on the couch just weeks earlier and weeping over Ubbe, who made her miserable. She imagined her own future as Ivar’s kept woman—utterly dependent on him, no career, no prospect for a life of her own. Even just in the six months that they had been together, Ivar had talked about what he wanted—marriage and children—and though she had told him gently and more than once that she didn’t feel ready for those things just yet, she still had sometimes pictured it too. Now the very thought of it made her sick to her stomach. 

But there was something else Margrethe had mentioned about Ubbe that night. It had caught her attention at the time, and then she forgot about it until this moment. What did she say? _ I helped him organize the spreadsheets. _

Two thoughts. No connection between them, for the moment. But as she sipped her tequila and watched the boats, she could just begin to see the outline of it taking shape. It was a ridiculous thought, virtually impossible, yet once it had formed in her mind she couldn’t force herself to let it go.

Her phone buzzed. She set aside her tequila and picked it up reluctantly, and then was relieved to see it wasn’t Ivar texting her after all.

**[Thora]: **Are you all right?

Freydis actually smiled when she saw the message. She hadn’t thought at the beginning that she would end up being friends with Hvitserk’s girlfriend; she hadn’t seemed to have much in common with her. But Thora was thoughtful and genuine and caring, and if Freydis hadn’t been so upset earlier at the restaurant, she would have had a hard time keeping herself from laughing when Thora told Ivar that his mustache looked stupid—an opinion that she had always been careful to keep to herself. She texted her back:

**[Freydis]:** A little better. Thanks for asking ❤️

Then she went back through her messages with Ivar. _ I want us to have brunch with my mom on Sunday...I want to take you out to dinner...I want to find a new jacket and I want you to go with me...I want you to come over tonight. I want, I want, I want. _

She would wait a little while before texting him. She was still too upset to trust herself not to tell him how she was really feeling just then. Instead, she closed out of her messages with him and went back to her contacts, scrolling until she reached the ‘M’s. She tapped on Margrethe’s name and then hesitated for a moment as she stared at the empty text box. 

An absurd idea. Dangerous, without a doubt. But maybe not impossible. She took a deep breath and started to type out her message.

* * *

Going to Luxembourg was a mistake. Thora had known it when she agreed to it, she had known it when Hvitserk sent her the train itinerary and hotel information, and most of all, she had known it on the morning of her trip, when Hvitserk showed up at her apartment with a note with his friend’s address and the package, which turned out to be a pillow in the shape of a cartoon dinosaur. He handed it off to her with an easy grin and a cheerful “Thanks, babe.”

She took it from him and looked at it, the stupid dinosaur pillow with its stupid cartoon smile, and, with as much courage as she could muster, she said in a joking tone, “This is it? You couldn’t send _ this _ by mail?”

“Oh, my friend’s kid has a birthday soon; I wanted to be sure it arrived on time,” he answered, and the lie was so fluent and so obvious that for a moment she doubted her own instincts. Maybe it was just another weird Hvitserk thing; maybe he really did have a friend with a child in Luxembourg whose birthday was coming up. At any rate, it felt too late to tell him that she had changed her mind, or to ask more about this friend of his, or what he was _ really _ asking her to do. She ended up forcing a smile as she tucked the pillow into her bag along with her clothes and toiletries for the trip.

“I think we should take a trip together,” she found herself saying all of a sudden. “After I get back. We should go somewhere. The two of us. Maybe—maybe Amsterdam, or something.” She was babbling now; she knew she needed to stop, but she just couldn’t. “We could go biking; check out the nightlife. Whatever you want to do.”

He seemed a little puzzled by all this, but he shrugged. “Yeah, we can if you want,” he said. He squeezed her waist. “Just text me after you’re done meeting my friend, okay?”

She thought about the dinosaur pillow in her bag the entire time as she headed to the train station, got on board, and handed off her ticket. Nobody stopped to ask her questions or accuse her of anything; the officers at the station barely even looked at her. She tried to settle in and read the book she had brought with her and play games on her phone, but she couldn’t focus or relax at all. By the time the train pulled in to the main depot at Luxembourg around sunset, she felt exhausted and nauseous. The last thing she felt like doing was to try to navigate on her own through a city she had never visited before to meet a stranger, but the pillow was still burning a hole in her bag, and she wanted badly to be rid of it. She could go to the hotel and shower and sleep after that.

It took a few attempts, but she finally managed to catch a bus to the outskirts of town. As the sky grew darker and the houses became smaller and more run-down, she began to wonder what Hvitserk would say if she lied and told him she couldn’t deliver the package; that she had gone and knocked on the door and nobody answered. But then...she still had a few more days in Luxembourg before her train returned to Copenhagen; maybe he would tell her to try again, or make her hold onto it and take it back with her. She pictured what her friends would say if she told them about this. They had all urged her to dump him, told her that he was no good—and she knew they wanted the best for her, but she wanted them to be wrong; she didn’t want to give them a reason to think, _ see, I told you so. _

She got off the bus at one of the final stops. It was almost dark now and the streets were mostly empty. It wasn’t terribly cold outside, but she pulled her jacket around her tighter anyway as she uneasily checked the address once more. Most of the houses in the area had boarded up windows and lawns overgrown with weeds, and even the streetlights seemed dim. Her instincts were telling her this wasn’t right, but at the same time, surely Hvitserk would have given her some sort of warning if he wanted her to go somewhere unsafe. Or he wouldn’t have asked her to do it for him at all. He wouldn’t do anything that would put her in danger. She was just getting herself worked up for no reason.

She took the pillow out of her bag, steeled herself, and knocked on the door. Nobody answered at first, though she could see the light shining through a window towards the back. She knocked a second time and waited a few moments. She was just about to turn and leave when the door suddenly swung open and an older man stepped out. His clothes were dirty and stained, and behind him she caught a glimpse of the hallway, which was filled with trash. There was no way small children were living there.

“Yeah?” the man asked her roughly, and when she didn’t answer right away, he sarcastically added, “Hello?”

She tried not to, but her voice came out as a squeak anyway. “Are you Leon?”

“Yeah. Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m Thora,” she said, trying to get her voice to sound more normal. “I’m Hvitserk Lothbrok’s girlfriend. He asked me to...to deliver a package to you. He told you I was coming, right?” She held out the pillow.

Leon raised his eyebrows. “Hey,” he called over his shoulder to somebody else in the house. “Come see who’s here. Hvitserk Lothbrok sent his girlfriend.” There was something contemptuous in the way he said that last sentence; something that made her blood run cold.

In a few moments, he was joined by a younger man with bleached blond hair who was considerably taller than Thora and obviously strung out. “This is his girlfriend?” the second man repeated as he leaned up against the door and looked her up and down.

Without warning, Leon snatched the pillow out of her hands, and she suddenly wondered what would happen if one of them tried to grab her, and if anybody would come if she screamed. “I’m going to leave now,” she told them, willing herself to sound less afraid than she actually was.

“Oh, already?” the younger man asked with a leer. He reached his hand out and she quickly took a step backwards before he could touch her. “You don’t want to come in? Hang out for a bit? You’re Hvitserk’s girlfriend; we want to show you a good time, that’s all.”

“No,” she said shortly.

The man giggled and turned to Leon. “Look at her. So fucking scared. He probably didn’t even tell her what he sent us.”

Leon crossed his arms, looking less amused than his companion. “The fucking nerve of these Lothbroks,” he complained to the other man. “This guy sent his girlfriend to do his business; he couldn’t even show us respect by coming himself.” He turned back to Thora. “All right—what was your name? Thora? You go tell your boyfriend something from me. You tell him I’ll let the disrespect he’s shown us pass, just this once. But next time, well...he sends you to me; I send you back to him. In installments. Got it?” 

“Yeah,” she told him, her heart beating wildly in her chest. She wasn’t totally sure how she managed to stumble away from there and make her way back to the bus stop, constantly checking over her shoulder to see if they were following her. When the bus finally arrived, her hands were shaking so badly she almost couldn’t count out the fare to get back to downtown. She pulled out her phone once she was in her seat and, forcing herself to focus, tapped on her contacts and called Hvitserk. He didn’t have his voicemail set up, so it just kept ringing and ringing. Finally, she hung up and shakily typed out a message:

**[Thora]:** call me back please

**[Thora]:** I need to talk to you

She thought for a moment about calling her parents, but then she realized she had no idea what she would say to them. _ Mom, Dad, I’m in Luxembourg; my boyfriend sent me to do a drug deal for him and now I’m scared and I want to go home. _She could imagine the alarm and disappointment in their voices, and in the moment that somehow seemed even worse than just staying.

It was well after 8:00 by the time she stumbled off the bus somewhere in the vicinity of her hotel, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to go there yet, so she ended up at the cafe across the street instead and got herself a coffee. Her hands were still shaking as she poured half of the sugar caster into her drink. She checked her phone again, but Hvitserk had not answered. She raised the volume just so that she wouldn’t miss it. She was so busy trying to calm herself that she didn’t notice the man approaching her until he pushed away the chair and sat down right in front of her and held out a police badge.

“Thora Eriksen? I’m Police Detective John Heahmund, with Scotland Yard,” he introduced himself with a smile. He was an older man in his forties, wearing a fitted black coat. His hair looked greasy despite not being styled in any particular way. 

She swallowed hard and looked down at her coffee cup. The presence of the police should have made her feel safer, but all she could think about was if he had been following her this entire time. If he knew she had done exactly what Hvitserk had asked her to do. Suddenly, she wished she had a better poker face, more like Freydis, instead of her own puffy cheeks and a trembling lip. She looked at her phone again, but Hvitserk still had not answered.

“I’m sorry, but I do not want to talk to you,” she told him politely. It was the best defense. As frightened as she was, Thora was certain that the police weren’t allowed to just talk to her, especially an officer from Scotland Yard. This was Luxembourg after all.

Heahmund didn’t seem upset by her refusal. "You've been dating Hvitserk Lothbrok for about three months now," he stated casually. "I was wondering how long it would take before he involved you in his business."

Thora's blood went cold. She thought back to Margrethe’s words about the investigation into the family; how it had troubled her and how she managed to ignore it anyway. What if she was now part of this whole investigation because of Hvitserk?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about," she lied. It was the only thing she could manage to say. Heahmund’s smile grew wider.

"Of course not, you're here for the holidays. Luxembourg is the place to be for a young woman like yourself, isn’t it?"

Thora ground her teeth together and kept quiet. Her eyes moved to her phone again, although she knew Hvitserk hadn’t called or messaged her back.

"I am not accusing you of anything, Ms. Eriksen. I just think you should be aware of what your boyfriend _ really _ does for a living." He pulled a photograph out of his bag and pushed it across the table towards her.

She couldn’t help it. She looked down and then bit back a gasp.

The man in the photo was barely recognizable. His whole face looked like a wound, and whatever wasn't swollen was black and blue. She thought then of the baseball bat in Hvitserk’s room. He kept it propped up in the corner and next to his bed. She had never asked about it, although she had been certain he had never even watched a game of baseball. It was fine, she had told herself, just as she told all her friends who looked at him suspiciously. There was a normal explanation for this. There had to be.

“Andreas Pelle, 20 years old. Small time cocaine dealer. But he was trying to keep a cut of the profits for himself instead of sending it up the Lothbrok family food chain like he was supposed to, so they sent your boyfriend to change his attitude.” Heahmund's voice was eerily calm as he put the photo away. "It's not pretty, is it? I have others, if you’d like to see." 

Thora shook her head quickly. "What do you want?" she finally dared to ask.

"Just information."

"I don't know anything."

Heahmund laughed at that. "Of course not. You are completely innocent." His tone was accusatory, and he looked smug in the way Ivar sometimes looked smug. He took out his wallet and held out his business card. "Look, Ms. Eriksen, you are right. You don’t have to talk to me, but I think it would do you good if you did."

Before Thora could think of what to answer, her phone rang. Hvitserk’s name was prominently on the display, and she realized a little too late that Heahmund's eyes had also moved in that direction. She snatched the business card out of his hand, grabbed her things, and picked up the phone.

"Hey," Hvitserk's voice came distantly through the speaker as she stepped back out to the street and left the detective behind in the cafe. She could hear his half grin in his voice. Relief flooded through her. "You called. Everything okay?"

Her first impulse was to give him a superficial positive answer, but as she started walking down the street, she decided against it. No more nice talk until she was out of here, far away from his supposed friend or the police officer. "No, I'm not," she said, unable to keep herself from starting to cry. "Your friend was horrible and threatened me."

"Oh." Hvitserk didn't sound surprised at all. "Yeah, don't take him too seriously. He makes empty threats all the time."

"You told me he was your friend," Thora replied curtly. Her voice sounded high and flimsy.

"Yeah, kind of."

Thora wanted to strangle him. "I want to leave. I can’t stay here. That guy really scared me."

Hvitserk's sigh sounded annoyed. "Babe, it’ll be fine. Nothing will happen to you, enjoy your stay."

"But I want to go home." She heard her voice turning shrill by the end of the sentence, and when she spoke again she tried to make herself sound calmer. "Please, I did what you asked me to do."

Silence on the other end of the phone. Thora licked her lips and waited. It wasn't too much to ask, was it? It couldn’t be a money issue. Hvitserk had enough money to send her to Singapore right now. “It was drugs, wasn’t it?” she suddenly dared to ask.

The silence continued. “We’re not going to talk about this right now,” he finally answered.

"A policeman asked me questions."

“Did you tell him anything?” Hvitserk asked after another long moment. His voice sounded strangely calm.

“No,” she told him, and she didn’t think she really had, though perhaps her emotions had told the detective a different story.

“Good. Keep it that way. We’ll discuss the rest when you come back home.”

It took her a moment to realize what he meant. She wanted to yell back into the phone, demand to be taken home, tell him what the detective had told her, but the short time it took her to understand Hvitserk, he had already hung up and she could do nothing but listen to the ring tone.

She was so angry she could have thrown her phone on the ground, but she fought the urge. Instead she went to her contacts to call again, and then she realized it would be futile. He wasn’t going to pick up. She was truly alone in this city. She burst into tears again, kneeling down onto the sidewalk with her phone in her hand. She was alone now, and she didn’t even have enough money to get back on her own.

Before she could think of what to do, her phone buzzed. She expected to see a message from Hvitserk, but it turned out to be Freydis.

**[Freydis]:** Hey Thora, I wonder if you have time this upcoming week? I need someone to talk to.

Thora stared at the message. Before she could change her mind, she dialed Freydis' number. Every ring felt like a minute. Then she picked up.

"Thora?" Freydis answered. She sounded a little confused.

Thora closed her eyes, trying to hold it together for one more moment. "Are you alone?" she whispered. She hoped it would disguise her shaky voice.

Freydis's tone grew more serious and quiet. "Yes."

Thora let out a breath of relief and closed her eyes. "I really need your help right now."


	3. Cosmopolitans

Life came back to Thora in the shower. The whole sequence of events from the time she called Freydis to meeting her at the Luxembourg airport and then flying out in the morning together had been a blur, though it had been such a relief to see Freydis that she had just lunged forward and hugged her the moment she had seen her. It had probably been too much, but Freydis had hugged her tightly in return.

She hadn’t managed to get much sleep on the plane, nor had she been particularly useful at answering any of Freydis’s questions about what had happened. In the end, they had gone back to Thora’s flat together, where finally, in her small bathroom, everything started to return to normal again. The hot water on her body reminded her that she was here; she was back, safe and sound. Whatever had happened last night, she had survived it. 

She watched the water dripping off the tiles for a little longer than she needed to before stepping out and drying herself off. The whole room was filled with steam and she opened the small window to let fresh air in. It felt cold against her skin.

Freydis was waiting in her bedroom. She sat at the desk with a tea cup in hand and another one ready for Thora. Her eyes were on the street outside, though she focused back on her with a weak smile once Thora stepped inside. Now with a clearer mind, Thora realized that she had never asked further about the fallout of getting fired, but with what Hvitserk had done last night, she was certain that Ivar had been the instigator. She knew she should have punched that asshole when she had the chance.

“Thank you,” Thora finally managed to say. It didn’t seem like enough.

Freydis smiled. “It’s fine; I don’t have much to do right now, anyway.” There was no bile in her words, just sadness. 

Thora knew exactly how she felt. She reached out and squeezed Freydis’s shoulder. “We will be all right,” she said to Freydis, as well as to herself.

“We will.” Freydis straightened up, her usual composure returning. “I know you’re tired and I understand if you’re not up to it right now, but I actually wanted to see Margrethe today. Ubbe has eloped with Torvi and I think she needs some help.” 

The information sank in slowly. Had all of the brothers scheduled their shitty behavior for one week? Thora looked around the room. She had the strong urge to tell Freydis she was too tired and just collapse into the cushions and sleep for a week. But the image of Hvitserk came back to her, lying on her bed with no shirt on and a joint in his mouth, laughing as he told a crude story.

She pressed her lips together and looked away. Her eyes fell on a cheap green plastic lighter on her nightstand. It was Hvitserk’s as well. She picked it up and put it in her pocket along with some weed. “All right,” she said to Freydis as she pulled on her hoodie. “Let’s do this.”

**

It was cold and clammy outside. Thora tucked her arm into Freydis’s and they made their way out to the suburbs where Margrethe lived, walking past a row of identical-looking houses. Finally, they stopped in front of a large white house with a yard decorated with garden gnomes. A big sign on the gate announced it as the ‘Home of Margrethe and Ubbe Lothbrok’ in loopy cursive. The U had fallen off.

Freydis rang the bell, but nobody answered, even though the lights were on inside. After two more tries, the door suddenly swung open. 

“I didn’t think you would actually come,” Margrethe told them in a trembling voice. She was wearing sweatpants and her hair was completely disheveled. “I didn’t think—I didn’t think anybody cared enough to want to help.”

“We’re here now,” Freydis told her, and despite everything that had happened, Thora couldn’t help but admire her calmness and control. “What do you want us to do?”

“Oh, I...” Margrethe mumbled, seemingly at a loss, “...just come in. I have to pack. Ubbe told me he wants me to move out before he gets back from Rome with—with Torvi; he’s found a studio apartment across town for me to stay at short-term until I figure things out, but I can’t—I don’t know what I’ll do, I don’t know where to begin…”

She trailed off, and for a moment Thora was afraid Margrethe was about to have a full breakdown, but instead she waved them inside. She had half a dozen open suitcases strewn out on the carpet, each one a light pink color with gold clasps, and there were shoes, clothes, and other items piled up haphazardly beside them. 

Freydis took in the scene slowly. “You know, I think we can handle this,” she told them. “We just have to focus on one room at a time. Margrethe, why don’t you start in the kitchen with Thora and decide which things you want to pack? I’ll start in the bathroom.”

Thora would have preferred it the other way around, but Freydis had clearly put herself in charge here, and she seemed to know what she was doing, so she followed Margrethe to the kitchen. Margrethe had already flung open all the drawers and cupboards, which were stuffed to the brim with colorful mugs and random appliances she had only ever seen on TV. She wasn’t sure how much help she was really going to be in this situation, but Margrethe didn’t seem to expect her to do much other than listen to her rant. 

“What am I supposed to do with _ these_?” Margrethe began pulling out plates and glasses from the cupboard. Each one was labeled “Mr.” or “Mrs.” in gold loopy cursive script. “These were our wedding gifts! How can I throw them away? How can _ he _throw this all away?” Thora watched in silence as Margrethe amassed a truly impressive pile of monogrammed silverware, bowls, plates, cheeseboards, and champagne flutes on the table in front of her.

“Am I supposed to leave this for his—for Torvi?” Margrethe continued frantically, speaking more to herself than Thora. “Should I take everything with me? Or just the ones that say ‘Mrs.’? Do I still get to keep those, even if we aren’t married anymore?” She suddenly paused in the middle of her monologue and picked up one of the Mr. champagne flutes, holding it delicately in both hands. Then, without warning, she smashed it on the floor. She clutched at the matching Mrs. champagne flute and doubled over, weeping. Thora reached out to take it from her.

“No, no,” Margrethe moaned, but she relented and let Thora pry the glass from her hands. Then she smashed it for her. It felt extremely satisfying.

“Listen to me,” she told Margrethe with conviction. “All of these things are just things. You don’t have to carry them with you if they make you unhappy. You can start over.”

For a moment, Thora was afraid she had done the wrong thing and that Margrethe would fall apart completely. Instead, she rubbed her eyes and nodded. “You’re right,” she mumbled, staring down at all the broken glass. “I made a mess. I should clean this up.”

“No,” Freydis said firmly from the doorway. They both looked at her. “Leave it. Let him pick up the pieces.”

They went together to the living room, drinks in hand, after Freydis had assessed the state of the liquor cabinet and decided on cosmopolitans. She and Thora arranged themselves among the decorative couch cushions. Margrethe paced up and down the room and looked like she was close to crying or smashing something again. 

Freydis held out the drink. “Take this,” she said very gently. Margrethe turned to her with a pained expression, but then she took the drink and plunked down onto an armchair that felt a little too classical to fit into the rest of the decor. They drank in silence before Thora remembered she had brought weed. "Can I smoke in here?" she asked Margrethe.

"Of course you can. Ubbe was so adamant about me not smoking since he switched to vaping. He probably smoked anyway, whenever I was at yoga class. I bet Torvi was there." A lot of bile left Margrethe's mouth unprompted, and Thora hesitantly looked down at the green lighter in hand.

“Fuck Ubbe,” Margrethe spat. She immediately fell silent, as if she were waiting for something to stop her, but Freydis and Thora said nothing. “Fuck him, and fuck this house, and his girlfriend. Fuck him for pushing me away. He didn’t even want to fucking fix this.” She took a big gulp of her drink and kept going. “Fuck all of them, honestly. Fuck Hvitserk, and Sigurd, and fuck Ivar, that fucking creep.”

Thora saw Freydis furrow her brows, but Margrethe didn’t notice. “And fuck Aslaug for literally everything,” she concluded.

“Ivar the creep?” Freydis finally asked, her voice very quiet.

Margrethe turned to her. It seemed as if she only now remembered that other people were present. Thora silently passed her the joint.

“Right, I never told you.” Margrethe blew out the smoke before handing the joint to Freydis. “I once caught him watching me undress. This was back when I was working for Aslaug. I spilled wine on my blouse, so I went to change clothes and I saw him spying on me from the door.”

Freydis froze, her whole body growing small again. She focused on the joint in her hand. “I’m sorry,” she murmured.

“It’s not your fault,” Margrethe said as she finished her drink.

“But still—”

“No!” Margrethe put down her drink with a loud plunk. “No ‘But still’! We’re not apologizing for these assholes anymore. Especially you; I cannot imagine what you’ve been through with this guy.” She had even more to say: “He was always taunting me and watching me when I worked at the estate, and I couldn’t do anything against it because he was mommy’s favorite. And Ubbe just told me to ignore him, like that was even possible. I was so glad when they stopped talking to each other, because then I didn’t have to cater to him whenever he came over and listen to him complain about my cooking. And when I told Ubbe I found it rude, he said Ivar had a point.” 

Margrethe had started crying again, but she was not trembling. The tears fell down her face and her hands were curled into fists. She was very angry. “And Ubbe doesn’t even know how to cook for shit. He would’ve starved without me.” She wiped away her tears. “Well, I sure hope Torvi will have fun catering to her five children and him.”

And with that, she was finished. Freydis gave the joint back to Thora.

“God, Ivar, he—” Freydis suddenly burst out. “He did that to you. I can’t believe it. I’m so ashamed. All those times I listened to him talk about you and say these awful things, and I didn’t say anything; I just sat there. And you said you don’t want me to be sorry, but I’m not apologizing on his behalf. I’m apologizing for myself.”

Margrethe and Thora both glanced at each other, unsure what to say, but Freydis wasn’t finished. She pulled her knees up to her chest and hunched over, looking smaller than Thora had ever seen her. “I know how both of you feel about him,” she mumbled. “I know you don’t get why I wanted to be with him in the first place. He’s rude. He’s a creep. He’s a narcissist. I know all this. I’ve known it all along, and I can’t explain it or excuse it. I just—”

Now Thora could see her shoulders begin to shake. She reached out hesitantly and took Freydis’s hand. Freydis gave her a smile, even though it looked like she was just barely holding back tears.

“All the guys I dated before—I worked so hard to get them to stay, to just commit to _ something_, anything, really. And with Ivar, I thought I finally wouldn’t have to do that. He just...gave me things because he felt like it; all these things nobody has ever given me in my entire life. So I let the rest of it go, because I believed that he was committed to me and cared about me, and that made everything worth it.”

She let go of Thora’s hand and wrapped her hands around her knees. “But I was wrong,” she continued. “He just cares about himself. And now all I can think is—why do I keep doing this to myself? Why can’t I find someone who’s actually capable of loving me back? What’s wrong with me?”

“It’s not you!” Thora exclaimed fiercely. “You know what you did for me? You dropped everything in the middle of the night, bought a plane ticket to Luxembourg, and came back with me when I was alone and scared. And then you told me we should come over here because Margrethe needed help. Because you _ cared_. And if Ivar can’t appreciate that, or these other guys can’t appreciate it, then they don’t deserve you.” She had risen halfway off the couch as she was speaking, gesturing passionately with the joint. Once she had finished her speech, she suddenly felt embarrassed and sank back down onto the couch. Freydis and Margrethe were staring at her. “Well, that’s what I think,” she finished somewhat lamely.

An awkward silence followed. Then Margrethe's attention shifted to Thora. "So, what about you? What do you want to say about Hvitserk?"

Thora was so taken aback that she didn't know what to say. In Luxembourg, right after Hvitserk had hung up, she would have been able to name every terrible thing he had done, but right now her words were caught in her throat. "I can’t think of anything," she finally replied.

"Really? Nothing comes to mind? Not even the fact that he somehow never had a condom on him?"

Thora froze. Margrethe was stirring her drink and watching her thoughtfully. Freydis's eyes had gone wide.

"He—he did that with you, too?" Thora stammered. Her mind went back to one of the first nights in her apartment. They hadn’t planned to end up there, but Hvitserk had already been down to his boxers by the time he told her. She had frozen underneath him and pushed him away. He had pulled her closer and murmured, “It's fine, I can pull out.”

"We were at his place, back before he started living with Ivar,” Margrethe recalled, her words slightly slurred. This was becoming entirely too personal. “Almost down to our socks when he told me. And the way he did it..."

Thora still remembered searching through her room naked in the dark. She had looked through every box, searched every corner. _ Please, don't let him go or be mad. Please, this was going so well. _Hvitserk had watched her for a moment then stripped down entirely, coming up right behind her. He pressed up against her and kissed the back of her neck: “Come on, it'll be fine. Just this once, babe.”

"Don't worry, I'm very experienced at pulling out." Margrethe's voice came out as a mocking drawl, and Thora suddenly felt incredibly slimy.

"He said that to you too? These exact words?" She couldn't believe it. 

Margrethe took another swig of her cocktail. "Yep, he thought he was so sly and smart about it, too, like I wouldn’t figure out what he was doing."

Thora hadn’t. She had actually believed that he had just forgotten, which was why she had bought condoms herself the next time. In retrospect, Hvitserk had seemed a little disappointed when she had told him. She looked at her drink in hand and suddenly felt furious. "God, what a scumbag," she finally dared to say. "What an idiotic, good-for-nothing asshole who’s never done anything with his life. Calling drunk in the middle of the night and thinking it's cute."

As she was talking, tears started to fill her eyes. She wiped them away before they could roll down her cheeks. "He really left me alone, surrounded by criminals, and told me everything was fine. I thought there was something hidden underneath the drugs and that blank expression, but there’s actually nothing. I am done with his mommy and daddy issues. I’m done caring."

By the end, her voice was shaky. Freydis put her hand on her shoulder, drawing soothing patterns onto her skin, and Thora finally stopped and breathed in. The tears finally fell hot and heavy and she couldn't stop them, and despite everything, she wasn't too sure if she really meant what she said; if she could actually stop caring.

After a while, Thora managed to calm herself. She felt a little embarrassed to have cried in front of Freydis and Margrethe, but when she looked at them, she didn’t feel any sense of judgment.

"Hvitserk’s never really understood boundaries and that sort of thing,” Margrethe said thoughtfully. “He’s not the only one; his brothers are that way too, but still." 

Thora turned to Freydis and they exchanged a meaningful glance before turning back to Margrethe, who was sipping her cosmo pensively. She wasn’t going to ask about this, she wasn’t going to ask about this, she wasn’t... 

"Margrethe, did you really have a threesome with Ubbe and Hvitserk?" Thora asked. 

Margrethe immediately grew sober and more reserved. She gazed at Thora and Freydis before answering. “Did Hvitserk tell you that?”

Thora shrugged, trying to sound nonchalant. “He told me about you two and about Ubbe… and how he didn’t seem to mind…” Her voice trailed off as she saw Margrethe roll her eyes. Then she took her cup and drained it without saying a word.

It was quiet. Thora and Freydis looked at each other again. “It’s not like he told me any details,” she added, though she wasn’t sure if that mattered now. She had asked in the heat of the moment, but now it felt too personal. She wondered how she would have acted in Margrethe’s situation, and the more she thought about it, the weirder it seemed.

“Well, I suppose that counts for something,” Margrethe stated flatly, somehow confirming Thora’s suspicions without giving much of anything away. Then she rubbed her eyes. “I really need to clean up and pack,” she said, and got up.

Freydis quickly leaned forward to grab Margrethe’s wrist. “I actually wanted to talk to you,” she said, and there was a strange light in her eyes. “When I...when I texted you earlier, there was something I meant to ask you. You told us that you helped Ubbe organize some of the spreadsheets for the...business. Do you still have access to those?”

Margrethe blinked. “Yes, of course…” she trailed off.

“You_ know _ things,” Freydis continued, and there was a resolve in her voice that Thora had never heard before. “You know how the business works. You know everyone’s role in it. You have the evidence. Ubbe showed you himself.”

Thora stared at her, wide-eyed, and then she looked at Margrethe, whose mouth was hanging open slightly as she digested what Freydis was saying. She remembered something else. She shakily took her wallet and pulled out the business card that Heahmund had given her in Luxembourg and handed it to Freydis. “This is the police detective involved in the investigation,” she told them. 

Freydis looked at it and then passed it on to Margrethe. “It’s risky,” Freydis told her quietly. “It could be dangerous for all of us. If all you want right now is for us to help you pack, then I won’t say anything more about it.”

Margrethe gazed down at the business card for a very long moment. When she looked up again, her expression was like steel. “He’s trying to kick me out, but this is my house too,” she said slowly. “This is _ my _ house, and this is _ my _ life.” Then she shook her head and corrected herself. “Our lives. They fucked with all our lives. Let’s go.”

“Go where?” Thora blurted.

Margrethe returned the card to her. “Ubbe’s office. I’ve got something to show you.”

The home office looked unlike the rest of the house: there were no decorations, apart from a wedding photo on a bookshelf. Thora examined the picture of Margrethe and Ubbe. He didn’t really look like Hvitserk or Ivar, but his blue eyes felt familiar, and the smile on his face was big and sympathetic. She supposed he and Hvitserk at least had that in common.

She turned to Margrethe, who was busy searching through his computer. “He didn’t even change the names of the documents,” she said as she pulled up a spreadsheet. 

Freydis leaned over her shoulder with furrowed brows. “This is from over a year ago?” she asked. 

Margrethe nodded. “Ubbe took a break from business after what happened between him and his brothers…” Her words trailed off again. “It’s not enough.”

Freydis and Thora glanced at each other. Margrethe was still staring at the computer screen, talking more to herself than to them. “Ubbe only dealt with the finance side of the business, never the drugs. This _ might _ be enough for him. It’s not enough for the rest.” She turned back to Freydis. “We need Ivar. He’s the link between the drugs and the finance side. If we get him, we get them all.”

Freydis’s voice was almost a whisper. “How?”

“He must keep stuff on his phone,” Thora said slowly. “If you can somehow get his phone, I have the equipment to unlock it and download the data. Then we take it all to the police.”

Seemingly without thinking, Freydis raised her hand and covered her mouth. “So I would have to…” Then she took a deep breath and set her hand down. “I’ll do it.”

“You’re sure about this?” Thora asked. “If he suspects anything…”

“I know,” Freydis said shortly. “But I’ll do it. We all have to be prepared, though, for whatever comes next. Once we set this in motion, there’s no going back.”

The room was silent for a moment. “All in?” Freydis asked.

Margrethe and Thora looked at each other and nodded. “All in.”

* * *

It was a funny thing how, at the end, Freydis couldn’t stop thinking about the beginning. As Ivar buzzed her into the apartment building and she walked down the hallway towards the elevator, she remembered the day she had met him like it had been yesterday: running from class to class, calling her mother’s landlord over lunch to ask him to fix the sink yet again, hurrying home to change into her old clothes and pick up her cleaning supplies to go scrub wealthy peoples’ bathrooms. She had just finished up and was heading back to her mother’s apartment to get ready for her shift at the bar, slipping into the elevator just before the doors closed. She remembered Ivar standing there in his expertly tailored and obviously expensive suit. It was the first thing she had noticed about him.

And she remembered, too, the sudden jolt as the elevator stopped between floors, and how they had both stumbled and then looked at each other. It hadn’t taken much to get him to start talking after that, and once he started, he couldn’t seem to stop: during that hour while they were stuck, he told her all about his taste in clothes, the shopping trips he had taken with his mother as a child, his relationships with his brothers and his parents’ failed marriage, and what it had been like growing up with his disability and how lonely and isolating it had sometimes felt. As the minutes passed by and it became clear that they wouldn’t be getting out of the elevator anytime soon, she saw his grip tightening on his crutch and the slight grimace of pain forming on his face. Eventually, he had to sit down, and she found herself sitting beside him, her hand not quite touching his, but close enough. At the end of the hour, she couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed when the maintenance workers finally got them out. People could believe what they wanted about her, call her a gold digger or a whore, say she was only after his money—but she knew what she was to him, and what he was to her, and also, perhaps, what they could never be.

And she knew as well that this was the end, even if he wouldn’t realize it yet for a little while. As she pushed the button and got in the elevator, as she got off on his floor and knocked on the door, she tried to memorize all the details, because this would be the last time. She reminded herself of what he had done and told herself yet again that this was how it had to be: after everything that had happened she knew he would never be able to let her go; he could never let go of anything he believed belonged to him. So she would have to let go first. It shouldn’t have been so hard; it shouldn’t have felt so rotten. It shouldn’t.

Ivar opened the door after a minute, and there was a weariness in his expression that she hadn’t expected. It took her a moment to figure out what was different about his appearance, and then she realized he had shaved off his mustache. “I thought you were still angry with me,” he said quietly. “I didn’t think you would come.”

“I was angry,” she said. “But I wanted to come over anyway.”

He stood in the doorway, unmoving, and she remembered him standing in the middle of her apartment and watching her silently with his eyes narrowed, and how, in that moment, she had suddenly been afraid of what he might do. _ Anything_, she had thought. _ He would do anything. _ She told herself now that there was no way he could possibly know about the plan she had devised with Thora and Margrethe. She trusted Thora enough to know she wouldn’t say anything, and Margrethe had more to gain from this than anybody. But even so, she had to fight to keep any sign of panic or doubt off her face as the silence stretched out between them. If he knew what she was about to do, if he could guess her intentions...she couldn’t let herself think about that.

So she made herself take the first step forward and stand on her toes to kiss him, and again, she couldn’t stop the memory from coming back to her, the first time they had kissed, the feeling of his hand on her waist and his breath in her ear. She could feel the tension and uncertainty in him now as she had back then. She wondered what was on his mind. She wondered why he was so quiet tonight; why every movement was slow and hesitant. For as long as she had known him, Ivar always had to fill every silence, he could never sit still, never _ stop_—even on bad days when he pushed himself to the brink of collapse, he was still restless. It had been exhilarating to be around him sometimes; intoxicating, even, to let herself get carried away by his relentless energy. 

But now it felt as though their roles had been reversed. She led the way to his bedroom and he followed and shut the door behind him. Then he stood there, just waiting. She could’ve talked now, could’ve explained how he had hurt her and why. He looked like he would listen; maybe even understand. But there would be no more talking now. 

They started off slowly; just hesitant soft kisses. She was the one who had to pull him closer; press her body against his. She undressed him, willing her hands not to shake as she undid every button of his expensive dress shirt. Then she undressed herself. This was an easier task; she had chosen this specific dress with this task in mind, yet it got caught in her hair as she tried to pull it over her head. Ivar’s hand came to help her and then she sat there next to him in nothing but her underwear.

He pulled away from her again and now he was just looking. His eyes moved from her face to her body and it felt like their first time; the same mixture of awe and fear in his face when he had seen her naked before him. Getting him to undress had taken much longer. With him, taking off every article of clothing had felt like removing a piece of armor. She remembered watching as he pulled his shirt over his head and seeing his half-finished tattoo, and it had been so surprising, so imposing, that she had forgotten what they were doing for a moment and just gazed at it. Her silence had made him nervous and he had lashed out then and asked her what was wrong, and she knew he wasn’t just asking about the tattoo at that point but everything else; he was asking how she felt about the person underneath. She had reached out her hand and touched his back and felt all the tension inside his body, all the anger. _ It’s beautiful_, she had whispered, and she pressed her lips against his skin and felt some of the tension subside. _ It’s so beautiful_.

Her anxieties rose to the surface again as she moved closer to him; a mixture of fear, disgust and anger all bubbling up inside of her. She could not help but think about his grip on her arm in the restaurant, pulling her closer just because he felt like it. And yet there was also sadness; the phantom feeling of emptiness. She was already missing him even though his warmth was seeping into her skin. She wanted to sit down on his lap, carefully studying his face every move along the way, but before she could, Ivar took initiative for the first time that evening.

She fell back into her familiar position on the bed, and some part of her was secretly relieved. Now all she had to do was lie back and let him do whatever he needed to do, but instead of following his usual pattern Ivar just looked at her again. He reached out his hand to brush a piece of hair out of her face and she had to do her best not to cry right there.

Then he moved down. His hands drew patterns on her skin. She realized what he was about to do when she felt his breath against her pubic bone. She gasped as he secured her legs over his shoulders. She wanted to stop him and ask what he was doing; he never did this unless she asked and he always behaved like it was a chore, but then she understood that this was the point. This was, to him, an apology.

The rest happened quickly and yet felt drawn out. Maybe it was his technique; he wasn’t the most skilled and tended to be impatient, but it was also the pressing feeling in her stomach, all the guilt, anger, and sadness rolled into one. She wanted it to be over as quickly as possible. She wanted it to go on forever.

It ended with him on top, like it usually did. Even when he tried to do other things, he couldn’t seem to escape it. Even here, even in his most vulnerable state, he still had something to prove. She reached out her hand and touched his cheek and this time, he pressed his face against her hand and kissed her palm. It didn’t slow him down or change his pace, but it was enough.

At last, she felt him beginning to tire, and then he suddenly paused and told her quietly that he needed to stop. He rolled off of her, exhausted and still dripping with sweat. After a moment, he reached out, pulled her close to him, and began running his fingers through her hair.

The smart thing to do now was lie there quietly beside him and wait for him to fall asleep. It usually didn’t take long after they finished having sex, and once he was out, it took a lot to wake him up. _ Just take the phone and go_, she told herself. _ Let this be the end of it. _ But for some reason, she couldn’t stop herself from thinking about what Thora had said to her on the night when it had just been the two of them and all their secrets started spilling out. _ I think you should tell him, even if you don’t think he’ll listen_, she had told her. _ Because this isn’t fair to you or to him. And who knows; maybe he’ll surprise you. _

“Ivar,” she said quietly. “Is this…is the way we have sex good for you? Do you enjoy it?”

His hand stilled as he played with her hair, but he didn’t brush her off or seem offended. He swallowed and stared up at the ceiling. When he spoke, she could barely hear him. “No.”

“Okay.” She exhaled slowly. “Do you want to talk about it?”

She didn’t think he would want to look at her, but he did, and something in his face made her heart ache, even now. “I guess I thought this would be…different. I had this idea in my head about what it would be like, from listening to my brothers talk. How I was supposed to do it. You know, be a man and all that. Because if I can’t do it, if I can’t be a man, then...then what the fuck am I? Stupid, right?”

She propped herself up on one elbow, waiting for him to continue. He reached out and took her hand. “I was so angry all the time when I was a kid, you know? All the fucking time, and I didn’t even understand why. It just didn’t seem _ fair_. And my parents, they fought over me so much; every week it was, ‘I know what’s best for Ivar; Ivar can’t do this, Ivar can’t do that.’ And I would think to myself, none of this would be happening if I were normal, if I were more like my brothers. If I just…tried harder, somehow. Even now, I still think that sometimes. Maybe I shouldn’t, but I do.”

“It hasn’t made you happy,” she surmised. “Thinking that way.”

“I guess it hasn’t,” he admitted. “But you…when I’m with you, I feel like I should be a better man, because you’re so…what I mean, I guess, is that I love you,” he said, stumbling over his words a little. He sighed and squeezed her hand. “I know I’ve done shitty, awful things to you and I’ve never said sorry for any of them. But I am. I’m sorry, Freydis. I want you to forgive me.”

She started crying then. She couldn’t help it.

He frowned. “What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”

_ Because I still love you_, she thought. _ I love you, and you will ruin yourself and everything around you. But I will not let you ruin me. And this is the last time I will cry over you. _

“It’s nothing,” she told him instead. “It’s all right.”

Not long after that, she felt his breathing begin to slow and his limbs grow heavy with sleep. She kissed the top of his head and her eyes drifted over to his nightstand where he had set down his phone, and for a moment, she thought about what would happen if she just left it there and let herself fall asleep beside him. In the morning, perhaps, things might be different.

But then she thought about Thora, who Hvitserk had used and then abandoned in Luxembourg without thinking twice. She thought about Margrethe, weeping as she attempted to stuff her entire life into five suitcases, and all the things that this family had done to her, Ivar included. They were counting on her. There was just too much at stake for her to give in now. Her future, their futures. Everything.

So once she was sure that Ivar was fully asleep, she carefully extracted herself from his grip and got dressed as quietly as possible. Her hands were shaking again as she took Ivar’s phone from the nightstand and slipped it into the bottom of her bag. He suddenly shifted in his sleep and she froze, but then he stopped and she started to breathe again. Her eyes settled on his shoulders, where she could just see the edges of his tattoo peeking out; those raven feathers she had admired so much.

What had he said it felt like? _ Freedom. _

She hadn’t really understood what he meant at the time. She had thought about the hours spent lying on his stomach and enduring the pain of the needles while the artist worked, all for a tattoo he couldn’t even see without a mirror. But now she thought that maybe that was the point: you didn’t need to see it to carry it with you, or for it to be yours. You just had to decide you wanted it badly enough.

So she walked out of his apartment for the last time, took the elevator, and headed out to the street with her heart pounding and her hands still trembling, and she didn’t know what would happen next or what would become of her, but when she tilted her head back and gazed up at the cloudless night sky, she felt lighter than she had in a long while; light enough to fly.

* * *

**[Hvitserk]**: hey

**[Hvitserk]**: wyd

**[Hvitserk]**: r u back

**[Hvitserk]**: wyd

**[Hvitserk]**: heyyy

**[Hvitserk]**: babe

It had been a weird few days, the whole plan to bring down the Lothbrok criminal enterprise notwithstanding. One night, Thora dreamt of the men in Luxembourg and woke up crying for about an hour. She tried not to beat herself up over this, and instead tried to be kinder to herself. She met a few friends for movie night, which had been fun, though she could feel her friends’ eyes on her from time to time. She hadn’t told them what had happened, or that she had stopped speaking to Hvitserk. She couldn’t tell them anything until Freydis got her hands on Ivar’s phone and all of this was over.

She needed time to process it all on her own, and her friends’ shock to the news that Hvitserk helped manage drug shipments for the local mob wouldn't help her with that. She usually texted Freydis instead. It was easier that way. After her nightmare, they had talked on the phone for hours. Thora felt a little bit guilty for laying everything on her, but she had the feeling that Freydis needed someone to talk too as well, and there was some comfort in that. Alone, Thora would have felt helpless, but together, more seemed possible.

Still, it was more than a little bit daunting when Freydis handed over Ivar's phone. Thora carefully took it out of her hands and went to her workstation. It looked like any other phone that customers had handed over to her father for repair. It was one of the newer models and certainly worth a lot of money, but otherwise, there was nothing out of the ordinary. His lock screen was a black and white picture of Freydis that looked like it had to have been a selfie. She sat on her bed in full makeup and a beautiful dress with a coy smile on her face.

_ He really was about to lose everything. _ Thora connected the phone to the unlocking device, and before long, she was in. Ivar’s background image was of a woman with strawberry blonde hair holding a boy of maybe seven in her arms. Both were laughing. The softness of her features felt eerily familiar. Hvitserk looked more like his mother than Ivar, who almost looked adorable in the picture.

She connected the phone with her computer and started to go through his folders and download everything she could find. The process was almost mechanical. She scrolled through a few documents, but absorbed no information.

Freydis came up behind her and looked over her shoulder. "What have you found?"

Thora shrugged. "I don’t know, I’m not really sure what I’m looking for. I’ll see if I can get into his email account and his messenger conversations.” 

Freydis nodded and didn’t say anything. "Everything all right?" Thora dared to ask. 

It took her another moment to speak. "I’m fine, it’s just—" she said, turning away. Thora thought she was trying to not break into tears. "It's over. I’m going over to my mother’s place today and that will be the end of it."

"I will try to process this as quickly as possible,” Thora promised. “Margrethe and I will go over it together in the morning and then we’ll take it to the police. You can join us," she said hesitantly. "Only if you want to, of course."

Freydis nodded but gave no answer. Thora was just about to offer her a cup of tea when Freydis frowned. Her eyes had fallen onto Thora's phone: Hvitserk was calling. Again. She had ignored all his calls since Luxembourg.

The display grew dark again after a minute. Thora shook her head. "He’s been calling and messaging me nonstop; it's very annoying."

"Anything useful?"

"No, not even an apology. Not that I really expected one," she added hastily. Freydis raised her eyebrows. As if to prove to Freydis and herself that she didn't care, Thora took her phone and blocked his number. She should have done it much earlier, but with the whole plan, she hadn’t wanted to seem suspicious.

With a sigh, she put down the phone. No more phone calls, no more message. Life moved on. It was really over. Before she could think too much about it, she turned to Freydis. "Tea? I have cookies."

Luckily for her, Freydis agreed with enthusiasm. She wanted to forget her current situation as well, and so they both sat on the bed until late in the evening when she was finished processing Ivar’s phone. Thora turned it off so he would be unable to track it, and around midnight, Freydis left for her mother’s apartment.

As soon as Thora had closed the door behind Freydis, she felt strangely empty again. She checked her phone, though of course there were no new messages from Hvitserk. She wasn't sure if this made her happy or not, but she decided she wasn’t going to deal with these feelings right now. She hid Ivar's phone in her desk and went to bed. Her mind was racing with what they had just done and what they still had to do. Hopefully Margrethe could make sense of Ivar's phone tomorrow.

With that thought, she finally fell asleep.

**

The buzzing of the doorbell woke her. It was still dark outside. Confused, she turned to her nightstand and checked her phone.

4 am.

No messages or missed calls. Blocking Hvitserk’s number had worked. She continued to look at her phone and she hoped for a moment that the buzzing had just been part of a dream. But then the doorbell buzzed again.

Deep down, she knew what was happening, but a part of her wasn’t ready to deal with it. So she just remained where she was and waited, hoping for it to be over quickly. The doorbell buzzed once more. She considered putting a pillow over her head, but a part of her was against it; a part of her told her she needed to witness this.

Silence followed for a very long time. Thora dared to look at her phone again. Was it over? She had the urge to send Freydis a message: ‘Hvitserk rang my doorbell at 4 am, can you believe that guy haha?’ She was already typing out the message when she heard footsteps on the stairs.

Her whole body froze again. Suddenly, she remembered how Hvitserk had managed to open his car door after having lost his keys during the festival. She closed her eyes and listened to her quickening heartbeat.

_ He can’t open the front door. He is a rich boy with no remarkable skill sets; why should he be able to pick a lock? And even if he could, he wouldn’t— _

A knock on her door. Then Hvitserk’s voice—loud, drunk, and drawn out: “Thooooooooooora.”

Even after a few months, Thora could already identify Hvitserk’s state of intoxication by the sound of his voice. He had clearly drunk a lot and was on the verge of blacking out.

The knocking was louder this time. “Let me in! I know you’re home,” he yelled. Thora cringed as she thought of the neighbors. He kept knocking and it sounded like he was close to breaking the door. Thora swallowed hard. Maybe she should call the police, or Freydis at least.

The knocking stopped.

“Thora, please.” Hvitserk’s voice grew softer.

Thora bit her lip. She needed to end this at some point anyway, so it might as well be now. With one last look to her phone, she got up from her bed and made her way to the door and put her hand on the door knob, thinking it through one last time. Freydis would advise against this. Everyone probably would. There was even a part of her right now that told her to simply call the police, but she decided to have faith. Just one last time.

Slowly she unlocked the door and opened it. Initially, she had just wanted it to open a little bit, but then Hvitserk pushed it open the rest of the way and stepped inside, giving her no option but to step back.

He didn’t look as wasted as he smelled. The combination of alcohol, weed and sweat filled the air. As soon as he saw her, he started to smile. “There you are,” he said, reaching out his arm in an attempt to hug her. His movement was a little wobbly, but he was good at acting sober. Thora stepped backwards into her room, and he followed.

_ This is a bad idea _, the voice in her head continued to whisper. She ignored it and composed herself instead. As he stepped closer again, she gave the coldest stare she could muster and crossed her arms. “You need to leave.”

Hvitserk stopped. His arms were still outstretched, and with the confused look on his face, he reminded her of a child. She braced herself for a tantrum, but the smile appeared on his face again. “You don’t mean that,” he said.

“I do.” 

Hvitserk stared at her, his expression turning neutral. She could see the wheels turn behind his eyes as he tried. to make sense of her behavior.

A chuckle. He mimicked her stance and crossed his arms mockingly. “Come on. I know, I know you’re mad because of—because of Luxembourg, because of the thing, and I’m sorry—”

“Sorry for what?”

Hvitserk blinked at her question and Thora regretted that she had asked him. It didn’t matter, but somehow she was still curious. She wanted to know just how incapable he was of answering.

“For—for—” he frowned. He really had to think about it. “For leaving you alone when you needed help?”

He searched her eyes for the reassurance she wouldn’t give him. Instead, she shrugged her shoulders. “Okay,” she answered as coldly as possible, which just confused him further. He took a step towards her, but stopped as she raised her hand. 

The lopsided grin appeared back on his face. He shook his head. “Now you’re playing with me. C’m_oooooo_n,” he said, drawing out the words. “I apologized. Can we just move on?”

It was probably only Thora’s imagination, but his voice started to sound more desperate. She prepared herself to tell him it was over.

“I’ve missed you.” His voice didn’t sound as drunk when he said it.

Thora had opened her mouth to say something, but the words disarmed her. She wished they didn’t have any meaning for her. She wanted to be cold and firm, but instead she could feel her heart growing soft and her lip starting to quiver. Hvitserk could feel her weakness. He reached out his hand and she almost let him touch her. In the last second, she turned her face away. “Hvitserk, what do you think you’re doing here?”

Hvitserk’s arm hung in the air close to her face, and she could see him calculating if he should try to touch her again. His eyes fell onto her lips. Thora quickly took another step back. “To check on how you’re doing,” he explained. “You didn’t answer any of my calls or messages.”

“Why?” Her voice was more strained than what she had intended. 

Hvitserk furrowed his brows. “Why?” he repeated.

“Why can you not get the hint and leave me alone?” Maybe harshness would get him to go, although at this point Thora feared that nothing but the police really would, and somehow, despite everything, she didn’t want to call the police on him. They would come for him soon enough anyway.

His expression turned sad, as if she had kicked him in the stomach. Suddenly he dropped his gaze to avoid looking at her, focusing instead on the floor. “Because I love you.” 

He spoke the words as if he didn’t believe it himself. It sounded defeated and sad. Thora tried to tell herself not to feel anything, not to grow soft, but the words felt like a knife twisting in her stomach. She had once dreamed of hearing these words from him, even if she had not admitted it to herself back then. It had been a silly hope to have, especially from a guy like Hvitserk: _don’t take it too seriously_, she had told herself, _just try and have fun_, and yet she had given him her heart anyway, hadn’t she? Casually, of course, not in grand gestures, but in small ways. Turning up the sound of her phone before going to bed so she would hear when he called at night; letting him sleep in her bed for two days after he had drunk too much. She had cooked him dinner and told herself it meant nothing at all, and it was a lie.

And now through some cruel twist of fate, it turned out that her efforts had not been in vain; that he wanted to return her affection after all. But it didn’t matter because he couldn’t, no matter how hard he tried. And she couldn’t even fault him for it; she still blamed his parents, on the way they had raised him, or didn’t.

Unable to answer, she turned away, trying not to cry. Finally, she gathered the strength to talk again. “You have to leave,” she said, though she couldn’t look him in the eyes when she said it and instead stared at a point right behind him.

Hvitserk didn’t react. “But I just told you that I love you.”

“It doesn’t matter. You put me in a horrible situation, you knew what would happen, and yet you let me do your work because it was convenient for you. And when I asked for help, you refused. I was so scared I couldn’t breathe properly. You left me alone, abandoned me in a country where no one spoke my language.” By the end she had gathered the courage to look at him again, but his face was unreadable; her words had been too quick for him to catch their meaning. She wasn’t sure if it was because of the alcohol or if he would have had a hard time understanding her anyway.

There was more she wanted to say, but it would have just confused him and distracted from the point she tried to make. Instead she crossed her arms once more. “We’re through,” she declared. “Please leave and never come back.”

He didn’t react. Her words seemed to bounce off him. She wondered how long it would take him to understand her, but then his nose flared up. His brows furrowed and eyes narrowed to slits, and he walked towards her with broad steps. 

If Thora had not seen the picture the detective had shown her, it might have not scared her that much. There was still something boyish about his entire demeanor. But Thora knew better, and suddenly the full gravity of the situation became all too apparent for her. She took a few steps back and almost knocked over the drying rack in the process, the same sentence repeating itself insider head: _ you shouldn't have let him in. _

She ended up pressed against the wall. Her eyes moved around to find a weapon of some sorts. Maybe she could hit him over the head and make a run for it, but before she could get this plan into motion, he loomed in front of her.

Never in their short relationship had Hvitserk ever seemed threatening. He was a little bit taller than her, but he tended to not carry himself that way, and Thora had liked that about him. Now she wondered if it had only been a facade. After all, he had hurt people; maybe even killed someone. What would stop him from killing her too?

"It's not over," he said through gritted teeth, almost unintelligible. He grabbed her shoulder and pushed her up the wall. "**You don't get to decide this!** **Do you understand?"**

He had gotten so loud by the end that she thought he must have woken some of the neighbors. They might even call the police, but it would be too late by the time they arrived.

Her whole body was tense; her plan to hit him and run entirely forgotten. Unable to even form a sentence, all she could do was plead silently with her eyes.

Then he stopped glaring at her and his expression turned blank again. Thora held her breath, wondering where his mood would swing next. Suddenly tears filled his eyes. He sniffled, trying to hold them in, but they kept going. He let go of her shoulders and stared down at his hands.

"I—" He opened his mouth to say something, but only a wailing sound came out. He looked at her almost apologetically. Tears streamed down his face and there was no way of stopping them, though he tried by burying his hands in his face and forcefully wiping them away.

He turned away from her and moved back to the middle of the room, his sobs audible. He stopped in the middle and looked at his hands again. "Like dad," was all he could say before plummeting to the ground with his head buried between his legs.

Only then did Thora dare to exhale. All tension left her and tears now formed in the corners of her eyes too. She pressed herself against the cool wall in an attempt to remain calm. Closing her eyes, she tried to regain focus. For a moment there was nothing but the dark, Hvitserk's sobs and the steady tick tock of the clock in the hallway.

When she opened them again, she felt calmer. Her attention turned back to Hvitserk still crying on the floor. He probably would continue for a while; she knew it was a hard realization he just made, but he couldn't stay here.

"Hvitserk." Her voice was still shaky, but she was certain he had heard her. His whole body froze. Thora watched the wrinkle on his leather jacket. She licked her lips. "Leave."

She had wanted to say something more, something smart, but she couldn't. When Hvitserk turned his head towards her, she didn't see a man or a teenager, just an abandoned child sitting alone in the dark. Someone had left him behind a long time ago and he never understood why.

He rose carefully as if he was close to losing balance. She thought he would say something, but he didn't. He slowly made his way to the small hallway. She didn't dare to follow him, unsettled by his sudden calm.

When the door closed behind him, she finally allowed herself to cry. She ran to the front door and locked it, listening to the sound of his feet moving down the stairs. She wished for some sense of clarity in that moment, but instead all she felt was guilt for abandoning Hvitserk in this vulnerable moment, and at the same time, the relief of having done so.

* * *

Margrethe hung up the phone the moment she saw Ubbe leave the garage and head to the front door. After the ups and downs of the last few weeks, the crying, the anger, the short lived happiness with Freydis and Thora—she had grown to like both of them, even Thora and her denim on denim faux pas—she finally felt peace. She put out her cigarette and quickly sent a message to their joint group chat, as she had promised to do as soon as Ubbe arrived.

Then she left the kitchen and moved to the front hallway. Her eyes quickly checked the time: 1.34 pm. She leaned against the wall and listened. Ubbe’s steps were slow; he was dragging his luggage behind him. She had been very relieved to see that he had come alone and not with Torvi. It would make things easier.

They hadn’t texted since his last messages telling her about the apartment she could move into temporarily. She hadn’t answered, but he had probably taken her silence as agreement. To his credit, he had not been wrong in assuming that the Margrethe of two weeks ago—no, the Margrethe of one week ago—would have followed through. She would have been angry about it and yelled and screamed like a child, and then she would have complied. But not anymore.

He stopped in front of the door and she heard him searching for his keys. In her inner eye, she could visualize him perfectly: his tired expression as he tried to push the key into the keyhole, and then his confusion when the key didn’t fit. There was a pause as he observed the key; maybe he had used the wrong one, but no, he hadn’t. Again, he leaned forward, trying to jam the key into the keyhole, but it just wouldn’t work. Margrethe hid a smile.

It took him surprisingly long to figure out what was happening. She was almost disappointed. Had he really thought he could just walk all over her like this? Finally the realization sank in and he cursed. There was a loud thump against the door followed by more cursing. She couldn’t help but smile now, happy that he probably felt as helpless as she had.

He rang the bell and started knocking. “Margrethe.” His voice was controlled, but noticeably upset. The knocks grew louder. “**Margrethe**,” he repeated, now close to yelling. She let him simmer a little longer. Maybe she should’ve taken out the champagne already. There was something to be said about hearing the desperation in his voice while the sparkles prickled on her tongue. She liked the concept of it, but she remained where she was and simply continued listening.

“_Bitch_.” She heard him walk up and down the porch, muttering to himself. Without trying to make too much noise, she stepped closer to the door and looked through the peephole. He had quite the sunburn, just like when they had gone to Rome. He stopped and grabbed his phone, probably calling Torvi, and turned away from the door as he waited for the other person to pick up. She wouldn’t let it get this far.

She quickly opened the door and stepped out onto the porch, shutting it behind her. She leaned against the door with her arms crossed and watched him turn around, looking mildly annoyed. This was clearly not how he imagined his return to look like. He was probably tired from the trip and had many different things to do. After all, he had been away for two weeks—a long time when you were partially responsible for a criminal enterprise—and now his not-quite-ex-wife had decided to be an annoying bitch again. Life was truly hard for him. Margrethe’s smile grew wider. Ubbe hung up and put the mobile phone away.

He was considering his words. Margrethe watched him grind his teeth as he convinced himself to be civil about this. She used the silence to watch him one final time. During the week, she had imagined how their final clash would look like. She had imagined him angry and her filled with justified rage, but now as he stood there in front of her in his washed out jeans with a slight sunburn on his face, the rage didn't arrive. Instead, she felt a little bit of clarity.

"We had a deal," he finally stated. 

Margrethe tried her hardest not to laugh. "I don’t recall making one."

He rolled his eyes. "You know what I mean."

"No, actually, I don't. You sent me a few messages explaining to me how I should behave now that you want a divorce. It didn't feel like there was anything up for discussion."

"Because there isn't," Ubbe quickly replied. "We are getting a divorce. I should've gotten it earlier." His voice grew softer by the end. 

Margrethe raised her eyebrows. "And when would that have been?" When had he given up on them and pushed her aside? Looking back on last year, there had been some signs. He had stayed away, gotten more quiet. She had thought it was all about Ivar and Hvitserk and that he would come to her if he needed her, but maybe that had been a wrong assumption. 

Like always, Ubbe denied her the answer, and instead he rolled his eyes. "It doesn't matter."

"It doesn't matter?" Now Margrethe could feel herself growing angry. _ Good, this was what it was all about. _ She walked over to him. "You decide to end our marriage and run off with another woman and then have the gall to tell me it doesn't matter?"

She expected him to get angry now as well, but Ubbe barely reacted. He just looked tired. Margrethe resisted the urge to push him. She wanted him as angry as he had been with Ivar and Hvitserk. She wanted to matter one final time.

"What do you want, Margrethe?" he finally asked. 

She raised her eyebrows. "What do I want?" It truly felt like she was interacting with a brick wall. It had always been this way, but only now was she able to recognize it. She thought of all the times she had reached out and he had pushed her away and it had made her feel bad because she had been incapable of reading him, but he had never given her the chance in the first place.

"Yes." Ubbe's voice grew louder. "I have given you everything. I even secured the apartment for you so you wouldn't be out on the streets. Why do you need the house as well?"

Because your house is no longer yours, she wanted to reply, but instead she ignored his last point. "Do you even listen? I want an explanation. I would like to understand why you left me like a coward and send me fucking Whatsapp messages to tell me you want a divorce."

Ubbe let out a long, hollow laugh that she didn't understand. "It's admirable that you still pretend. Is that what the lawyers told you to do?"

"Excuse me?"

Ubbe couldn't stop laughing. He turned away and shook his head. "It's over Margrethe; you don't have to pretend you love me anymore."

A shiver ran down Margrethe's spine. The fire inside of her turned cold. "What?"

Ubbe shrugged. "You said it yourself when we came back from the barbecue with Ivar and Hvitserk. You told me you always wanted to be like my mother even before we married. This was your plan all along."

He stopped, and Margrethe watched him in fascination. It was interesting what one chose to remember in the end. She remembered the evening, but not these specific words. She had tried her best to comfort him: _ we can do this together, _ she had wanted to tell him as they lay in bed, _ we don't need them. _ But this was what he remembered. She had once believed Ubbe was smarter than his brothers, but it felt that even Hvitserk would've handled this better.

She crossed her arms. "And you in this whole year couldn't get yourself to ask **your wife** what she meant?"

He sighed. "You like me because I’m Ragnar Lothbrok’s son and chairholder of the family enterprise. Don't act like this didn't affect your decisions."

She could sense some of the insecurities seeping out of him. She still remembered his words from their honeymoon, his resignation towards his father while still being caught up in being his son. She snorted. "Ubbe, what did you like me for? My looks? My intellect?" Ubbe opened his mouth in surprise. "Oh right,” she continued. “You don’t think I am particularly smart. I’m sorry."

He closed his mouth again, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with what she had said, but he didn't need to. He had left his computer with her throughout his entire trip; he must have thought her truly stupid.

"That's not the same," he finally replied, but his voice didn't sound sure about it.

"Tell me three things you love about me—loved," she corrected herself quickly. "Not including anything I did for you."

Ubbe gazed at her. Margrethe wasn't sure if he was actually trying to come up with things or if he was thinking about something else. He finally shook his head and turned away from her.

"You're a warm person. You’re unlike your father or your mother; you rely on your warmth to get people to work for you." Ubbe froze as she started to speak. As he turned around, she raised her thumb—number one.

"You are gentle and patient. Even in all those arguments with Ivar and Hvitserk, you kept calm, and I know how hard that was for you." _ Number two. _

"You hate hurting other people. Even if you hate them, even if you don’t care about them. You abhor it." _ Number three. _ There was more she wanted to add: _ That's why you ran away like a coward in the night—you didn’t want to hurt me. There was some good intent there, but still cowardly. _

Ubbe watched her without saying anything. He looked a little sad now. Maybe she was getting to him, but it was too late. "Can I at least have my computer?" he finally asked, and Margrethe shook her head. She had given it to the police already.

Ubbe sighed. "Margrethe, if you don’t let me in, I will have to call the police." He sounded very tired, and Margrethe could see the bags underneath his eyes. Maybe he was tired because he had spent the night awake with Torvi, but Margrethe still believed she knew him well enough to know that it had been a few stressful weeks for him as well, even on vacation in Rome.

Sometimes, the universe aligns itself perfectly: from the corner of her eye, she saw three police cars driving down the street. Her eyes went quickly to her phone—1:48. They had taken their sweet time. Ubbe turned to look as well. He frowned as the cars pulled up in front of their house. "There’s no need to call," Margrethe explained. "I called them right when you arrived."

Ubbe's head quickly snapped back, his eyes growing wide with fear, and she would be lying if she said she didn’t enjoy it at least a little bit. "You shouldn't have left your computer at home," she shrugged. "There’s a warrant out for you and the rest of your family. I’m sure they’re on their way to pick up your brothers and your mother right now."

Ubbe continued staring at her even as the police entered the yard, even as they read him his rights, even as they put him in handcuffs. Margrethe had wondered how Ubbe would react; if he would rage at her and call her names, but he seemed paralyzed and couldn’t even speak. His eyes went back to her, and there was no malice in his expression, not even anger. Margrethe couldn’t remember the last time Ubbe had looked at her like this; how long it had been since he had truly seen her. She couldn’t say, but at least in this moment he saw her. Understood her, even.

Before the police took him away, Margrethe stepped closer. "You asked what I want," she said, and pointed at his cuffs. "I want this.”

Ubbe didn't reply, but he didn't have to. His expression was all she needed. Margrethe watched as the police put him in the car and drove off, and only then did she go inside.

Back in the kitchen, she opened the champagne and took a sip directly from the bottle. She knew she would have to leave the house as well; it would soon be too dangerous for her to stay here. But she could revel in her victory at least for the moment.

She took out her phone and wrote a reply to the group chat.

**[Margrethe]:** It went surprisingly well.

**[Margrethe]: **Anyone have time to come over for some champagne?


	4. Champagne

The doorbell buzzed around 7 pm. Thora had just checked her small fridge, which was packed with as much beer and champagne as it could hold. Freydis and Margrethe had said that they would bring wine and hard liquor. Given her small kitchen area, Thora had decided against cooking anything and opted for Arabic takeaway and chips.

Freydis announced herself through the intercom, but Thora had already been certain that it would be her. Freydis was always early. She took a last look at her room, where she had cleared off her desk to make space for food and drinks. The bed was made and would work as the couch for the evening. It was really nothing in comparison to Margrethe’s house or Freydis’s former apartment, but both had moved out by now and Freydis didn’t want to celebrate in the small apartment she shared with her mother and Margrethe had only just moved in to her new place—not the studio that Ubbe had rented for her, but a place of her own choosing. As it turned out, divorcing a Lothbrok had its financial perks, especially a Lothbrok that had cheated on her and was clearly at fault.

So they had decided to do it at her place, which was fine. Thora didn’t particularly mind. She was moving soon anyway for safety. After everything that was about to happen, the police had encouraged them all to change their locations at least, if not go into witness protection.

There was a knock on the door, and Thora turned and opened it to see a grinning Freydis, whose eyes widened right away. “Your hair!” she exclaimed before they hugged each other. Thora pressed her extra close and smiled into Freydis’ shoulder.

“I did not expect that,” Freydis finally said after they separated, and Thora grinned. She hadn’t either. It had been a spur of the moment decision on Wednesday evening. She had been at a friend’s place and after a long conversation about nothing in particular, they had both decided to cut their hair around midnight. Her friend had opted for the buzzcut, while Thora had gone for a less radical bob. Leaving most of her hair behind had been freeing. It had felt like the start of a new chapter, and very much deserved.

“Do you like it?” she asked, grabbing a champagne bottle out the fridge as Freydis took off her shoes.

“Yes, it makes you look very stylish, a little business-like.”

Thora laughed and popped the bottle. It almost overflowed and she quickly put it into the sink to let it settle before pouring a glass for each of them.

“How has your week been?” she asked after she handed Freydis her glass. 

“Oh, it was all right,” Freydis said as she followed Thora out of the kitchen and they sat down on her bed. She took a sip of her drink and looked around. Not much had changed since she had come over on Saturday, other than a few more pictures that had come off the wall and gone into boxes. “Mom is a little all over the place; I have the feeling this whole business is scaring her more than me.”

“I understand, my parents are also very tense,” Thora said. “My brother is texting me every day with tips on what to do in the courtroom, since his wife is a lawyer. As if Heahmund and everybody else isn’t already telling us how to behave right now.”

Freydis nodded. “Honestly, I am so done with it all. If someone explains to me again what specific choice of words to use when describing how I ‘stole’ Ivar’s phone, I’m going to combust.”

“Yeah, or what I’m supposed to say when they tell me I ‘tampered with evidence,’” Thora added just as the doorbell rang again. Margrethe had arrived, and Thora and Freydis got up to greet her. Even though the weather had still been wet and a little chilly, Margrethe was already dressed for spring. As they sat down and ate the food Thora had picked up, she told them all about the new apartment and her meetings with the divorce lawyer.

“Are you prepared for Monday?” Thora finally dared to ask after they had finished eating. She filled Margrethe’s glass with more champagne.

Margrethe grinned. “Oh yes, I’m ready for court. I’ve even planned my outfit for the day.”

Thora was about to raise her eyebrows at the remark, when Freydis next to her nodded. “So have I.”

Perplexed, Thora watched Freydis take another sip from her glass. Of course the police and her family had told her how to dress, but she had not really prepared anything special—she mostly just cared that she was comfortable, at least to her, but of course Margrethe and Freydis would turn it into a show. Once her brother found out, she would never hear the end of it.

“You are both so annoying,” she said and rolled her eyes. Margrethe and Freydis laughed.

“You didn’t prepare anything? Are you really going to go in jeans and a jeans jacket? Double denim?” Margrethe asked, a little bit of judgment seeping through, but Thora didn’t mind.

“If I could I would, trust me, but I think I’ll go with the only suit I have.”

Margrethe shook her head. “Don’t you want to dress to impress? Make these assholes squirm a little?”

“No,” Thora said, and Margrethe’s playful smile froze on her face. “I don’t really care, actually.” And that was the truth. It wasn’t that she had stopped thinking about Hvitserk and how things had played out in the end. Sometimes she couldn’t stop herself from thinking back on that night and his pained expression. She still felt pity and maybe a little bit guilty, but nothing more. She had been lucky that it had only been three months and that Hvitserk had not been a sentimental guy. He had not left much behind to discard: only a green plastic lighter and some shampoo bottles remained, and she had kept them because she didn’t associate them as strongly with him anymore. 

But it was okay, it was just part of a story she would tell people someday. Or maybe she wouldn’t. How could you tell such a story and make it right? It wasn’t a gruesome story, nor even a very impressive one. She had liked him, he had liked her, and for some time it had worked out, until it hadn’t. Nobody chasing after anybody, no crying in the rain, just a breakdown at 4 am.

“Good for you,” Margrethe finally stated. Thora blinked and shook her head, discarding the thought. “I mean it,” Margrethe added after taking another sip of her champagne. “I’m glad it doesn’t matter as much to you.”

Thora shrugged her shoulders. “I was the least involved in all of this. It’s only natural that it doesn’t bother me as much.” She saw Freydis raise an eyebrow at that, but she didn’t say anything.

“What about you, Freydis?” Margrethe asked. “You must feel pretty good about this. It was your idea, after all.”

“I know it was,” Freydis said. She reached up and tugged on her earlobe, and for the first time, Thora noticed her earrings—delicate, fan-shaped green gemstones framed with gold and tiny diamonds. “I’m not sure how to feel about it,” she suddenly confessed. “I know this was the right thing to do, and all the other options would have been worse. But the last time I saw Ivar, the last time we talked...I just had this feeling that things could have turned out differently between us, you know? That we could’ve been better, somehow.”

Thora understood what she meant. It had kept her awake at night, sometimes, thinking about what exactly had gone wrong between her and Hvitserk, and if there were things she might have done differently: if she had turned him down when he asked her to go to Luxembourg, or if she hadn’t ignored his calls afterwards and made him explain himself. If he had been a different person. Too many ifs. She tried to put the idea out of her head and looked towards Margrethe, who seemed lost in thought as well. Of the three of them, her relationship had been by far the longest, and Thora wondered if she regretted it; if she felt as though she had lost all this time. 

She was on the verge of asking when Margrethe abruptly set her champagne down and walked over to the window overlooking the street. “I’ll be glad when this is all over,” she said, more to herself than to them. 

“What will you do next?” Thora asked. It had been something she had thinking about herself, but there had been no clear answers yet. The safe thing to do would be leave Copenhagen for a little while—maybe a long while—once the trial was finished, but she couldn’t quite picture living somewhere else, away from her family and her friends. Her entire life was here.

Margrethe, it seemed, felt no such uncertainty. “Oh, I’ve got a plan in mind,” she told them, turning back from the window with a smile, and in all the time Thora had known her, this one felt the most genuine and relaxed. “I’m selling the house; I’ve already got a buyer lined up and I think the sale will go through in the next couple weeks. And then after I’m no longer needed for the trial and the divorce settlement is complete, I’m going to move to Oslo and go back to school. I was studying business at the university here before I married Ubbe, but I never finished my degree. So I think it’s time I finally did that. I think it’s time to have a life of my own.”

Freydis was smiling back at her. “That’s not all; you told me something else, remember?” she prodded.

Margrethe grinned. “Right. Before Oslo, I’m going to Cote d’Azur for three weeks and I will do absolutely nothing but lie on the beach and drink wine, and nobody will stop me.”

It sounded a little weird to tell someone older than her that she was proud of her, so Thora settled for the next best thing. “I’m really happy for you,” she said.

“I’m happy too,” Margrethe said. “Happier than I thought possible. It’s hard to believe that just a few months ago, I really thought my life was over.” She came back to her chair and poured herself more champagne. “What about the two of you?”

“I’ve been looking at some positions in Amsterdam,” Freydis told them. “I put in some applications already, and I just heard back that I’ve got an interview with one of the museums, so we’ll see what happens with that.”

Thora stared down at her glass of champagne. “I don’t really know what to do yet,” she confessed. “I think I could probably find a job somewhere else, but I’ve never really lived away from my family and I feel weird about moving to a place where I don’t know anybody.” 

It was silent for a moment. Then Freydis shifted in her seat. “Tell you what,” she said a little hesitantly. “I don’t know how this interview is going to go. But if it works out...what do you think about joining me in Amsterdam?”

She remembered once asking Hvitserk if he wanted to take a trip to Amsterdam with her. It had been a random thought, and of course it never happened. But now she could feel a big grin spreading across her face. “I’d like that,” she said, and now it felt a little less like she was running away and more like the beginning of something new; she wasn’t sure exactly what, but she could picture parts of it: Freydis and her sharing pot brownies in their flat, or riding bikes through the city. Freydis’s bike would have some sort of stylish design and Thora would have her rusty old thing. No matter what happened, they wouldn't have to be alone. Overwhelmed with feelings, Thora reached out and took Freydis's hand. It was impossible for Thora to convey how important Freydis was to her, so she hoped that squeezing her hand would be enough for the moment.

Margrethe cleared her throat, and she jumped a little. She raised her glass in a toast. “To the future,” Margrethe declared, and they all clinked glasses.

“The future,” Thora repeated after her before taking a sip. She looked at Freydis, who smiled back. _ All in? _

_ All in. _

* * *

_We now take you to the High Court of Eastern Denmark_ _in Copenhagen, where members of the Lothbrok family entered not guilty pleas in response to an array of charges unveiled several months ago after a series of surprise arrests. The accused were later released on bail._

_ [Wide angle shot of two black cars pulling up to the courthouse. Aslaug steps out of the back seat of the first car and is immediately mobbed by reporters. She is wearing large sunglasses and holds her hand in front of her face as she walks past them and into the building, followed by her lawyers.] _

_ The head of the family and founder of the company, Ragnar Lothbrok, was not present in court, but we have received news that he was recently apprehended in Mallorca after months on the run. He is now awaiting extradition. _

_ [Picture of Ragnar’s mugshot. He is sneering at the camera.] _

_ Prosecutors say the charges include multiple counts of money laundering, bribery of public officials, drug trafficking, and assault. We are told that this is the culmination of a years-long international investigation into the prominent and wealthy family, which for decades has controlled virtually all shipments in and out of the Port of Copenhagen. _

_ [Cut to the interior of the courthouse. Aslaug, Bjorn, Ubbe, Hvitserk, and Ivar are standing with their lawyers in front of the judge. Ubbe seems nervous, Hvitserk’s expression is blank, Aslaug and Bjorn look tense, and Ivar is obviously angry.] _

_ Although none of the family members spoke at today’s hearing, their lawyers indicated that they intend to mount a vigorous defense, saying, quote: “These charges against our clients have been drummed up by overeager prosecutors willing to accept illegally gathered evidence brought forth by several individuals with deep personal grudges against members of this family, and we are confident that the jury will find our clients innocent of all charges.” End quote. _

_ [The camera quickly pans across the courtroom. On the far left side of the room and in one of the back rows, we catch a quick glimpse of Margrethe, Freydis, and Thora seated next to each other and watching the hearing intently. Thora's hand is on Freydis's arm.] _

_ No doubt there will be many developments in the weeks and months to come, and we will be keeping a close eye on these proceedings as the case now moves to trial. _

_ We’ll be back with the weather report right after this short break... _


End file.
